Opinion: Reproducibility failures are essential to scientific inquiry, Redish et al, 2018

Discussion in 'Research methodology news and research' started by Indigophoton, May 16, 2018.

  1. Indigophoton

    Indigophoton Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    http://www.pnas.org/content/115/20/5042
     
  2. alktipping

    alktipping Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I remember from chemistry at school that although chemistry teachers did the same experiments with different classes they could never be certain of getting the same results 100% of the time to many variables .
     
  3. BruceInOz

    BruceInOz Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    What this article is saying is that your chemistry teachers should view their inability to replicate as indicative that there is something about the process that they haven't fully understood. Some hidden variable that they thought was irrelevant but is in fact important. An unknown impurity in one of the chemicals or something that needed to be measured to greater accuracy or something. Science progresses by using the lack of reproducibility to ask more questions and uncover the hidden variables.

    Great article. Well worth the read.
     

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