One of the most important elements of the scientific method is the assumption that if one bunch of scientists repeats the experiments of another, using exactly the same methods, then the results should be identical. “A large portion of replications produced weaker evidence for the original findings despite using materials provided by the original authors, review in advance for methodological fidelity, and high statistical power to detect the original effect sizes.” “Collectively these results offer a clear conclusion,” the investigators concluded in a paper in the journal Science.
In 2015, the world of psychology research was rocked when more than 100 scientists collaborated in an attempt to reproduce the results of 100 studies published in three leading journals and found that in many cases they couldn’t.
