Guttinger, Stephan
(2018)
A New Account of Replication in the Experimental Life Sciences.
[Preprint]
Abstract
The natural sciences are in the midst of a reproducibility crisis. Scientists don’t replicate existing data and when they attempt to do so they often fail. Nevertheless, survey data shows that scientists largely trust the non-replicated data they are using. The question of why this is so has not been raised in the debate about the reproducibility crisis. Here I will claim that one reason for this trust is a hitherto unidentified form of replication, which I will call ‘micro-replications’ (MRs). Using a case study from the experimental life sciences I will illustrate how MRs depend on a crucial part of the experimental sciences that is poorly understood, namely experimental controls. The existence of MRs suggests that more replication is taking place in the life sciences than current analyses imply.
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