Here are two of them that use a different method than the hermeneutical one: The granodiorite stele that was named the Rosetta Stone and that was found in 1799, has texts both in Ancient Egyptian, using hieroglyphic and Demotic script, and an Ancient Greek text. After all, it is possible (i) to compare the original data (say, certain texts, archeological findings, the occurrence of certain verbs, and so on), the conclusions of the original study and the replication study, and everything in between, (ii) to take a qualitative approach and sometimes even, if not a rigorous statistical approach, at least a more quantitative approach, e.g., by counting the number of verbs in Shakespeare’s plays that end in “th” or “st,” and (iii) to define how much similarity between the original results and the results in the replication study is required for something’s being a successful replication, even though this will be harder or impossible to quantify, in opposition to many studies in, say, psychology and economics. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k96 published January 31st. So far, I have primarily deflected three objections to the possibility of replication in the humanities. 1996;71(2):230–44. That may lead to a new interpretation. For the issue of lack of effective peer review, see, for instance, [13]. ‘Sunset at Montmajour’: a newly discovered painting by Vincent van Gogh, Burlingt Mag. See [33], 112–122. Moreover, they often meet the four stereotypical properties mentioned above: (a) they are carried out by a team of independent investigators; (b) they generate new data; (c) they follow the original protocol (or, at least, method description) closely and justify any deviations; and (d) attempt to explain the resulting degree of reproducibility. See Van Tilborgh, Meedendorp, Van Maanen [43]. Replication may not be possible in disciplines that primarily use a deductive method and that do not collect and analyze data, such as logic, mathematics, certain parts of ethics, and metaphysics. They are thought to be not nearly as reliable as the sciences and not to provide any robust knowledge. Not Found. First, one may have made certain mistakes in one’s original reading and interpretation: faulty reading, sloppy analysis, forgetting relevant passages, and so on, on the first occasion may play a role. This means that various other kinds of dependence are perfectly legitimate for a replication study. This captures what most people take to fall under the umbrella of “humanities” and that will do for the purposes of this paper.Footnote 11, Let us now move on to replication. Rather, it would be the nature of the beast (a humanistic study, or a particular kind of humanistic study, such as one about value or meaning) that prevents the possibility of replication. 2015 https://acmedsci.ac.uk/file-download/38189-56531416e2949.pdf, last visited May 1st 2018. Finally, I explain why such replication in the humanities is not only possible, but also desirable. Nussbaum M. Not for profit: why democracy needs the humanities. What the “Grievance Studies” Hoax Actually Reveals. Reproducibility and replicability of research results have gained a lot of interest recently with assessment studies being led in various fields, and they are often seen as a trigger for better result diffusion and transparency. The Cambridge Companion to Augustine. independent group of researchers can copy the same process and arrive at the same results as the original study Abingdon, New York: Routledge; 2018. In: Seiffert H, Radnitzky G, editors. For full bibliographical details, see the list in the “References” section. The Circling of the Academic Wagons, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 October. Before we move on, I would like to discuss an objection against the desirability of replication in the humanities. In order to answer the question of whether replication is possible and, if so, desirable in the humanities, I first create more conceptual clarity by defining, in addition to the term “humanities,” various key terms in the debate on replication, such as “reproduction” and “replicability.” In doing so, I pay attention to what is supposed to be the object of replication: certain studies, particular inferences, of specific results. The stone has turned out be the key in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. Parts of linguistics study grammatical structures that, by definition, have many instances, as will be clear from any introduction to morphosyntax.Footnote 33 As to the quantitative empirical sciences: the big bang, the coming into existence of life on earth, space-time itself, and many other phenomena studied in the empirical sciences are unique phenomena: there is only one instance of them. For a similar definition, see KNAW [10], 18; NSF [17], 4–5. In simple terms, research reliability is the degree to which research method produces stable and consistent results. Replicability is conducting a new experiment and reaching the same conclusions. Replicability in Research: The Crisis of Positivist Ideology in the Social Sciences. Van Tilborgh, L, T Meedendorp, O van Maanen. It is, of course, perfectly compatible with my definition to make these further distinctions among varieties of replication studies. [10], 19). New York: Harper; 1965. p. 1965. If one has the right background knowledge and skills, one can fairly easily study the same data or collect further data in order to replicate this study.Footnote 45. Second, the definition states that the new study should in some sense be independent from the original study. Thus, how much replication is needed depends on the epistemic state a particular discipline is in. A specific measure is considered to be reliable if its application on the same object of measurement number of times produces the same results. Rik Peels. In: Morin J-F, Olsson C, Atikcan EO, editors. Terms and Conditions, Now, reports about replication focus on various quantitative empirical sciences.Footnote 8 The KNAW Advisory Report, for instance, makes explicit that it is confined to the medical sciences, life sciences, and psychology.Footnote 9 These reports, though invite researchers from other disciplines to consider the relevance of these documents and recommendations for their own fields. This brings us to the second key term, “replicability.” It seems to me that this term is used in two crucially different ways, in the KNAW Advisory Report as well as in the broader literature on replication studies. Second, regarding the desirability of replicability, in contrast to quantitative research, this is a poten- tially contentious issue in qualitative research. The report recommends a range of steps that stakeholders in the research enterprise should take to improve reproducibility and replicability, including: All researchers should include a clear, specific, and complete description of how the reported results were reached. To give just one example, according to American philosopher of science Alex Rosenberg: When it comes to real understanding, the humanities are nothing we have to take seriously, except as symptoms. NAS: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Finally, I explain why such replication in the humanities is not only possible, but also desirable. Given the complex nature of the replicability discussion, we have generated a list of tips to assist students in navigating the issues they may be confronted with throughout the course of their research. Now, one might think that, in opposition to the quantitative empirical sciences, such as the biomedical sciences, the humanities are not really suited for the phenomenon of replication. In: The Quality of Qualitative Research . Conjectures and Refutations. [19], 9; see also Earp and Trafimow [20]. Thus, we should not conclude from the fact that some studies that employ the hermeneutic method are replicable that all of them are: some of them may involve too many controversial background assumptions in order for a fairly straightforward replication to be possible. (2015). statement and Nature. (A) The committee will assess research and data reproducibility and replicability issues, with a focus on topics that cross disciplines. We should not forget, though, that we find radically different sorts of schools within, say, economics or physics. Note the KNAW Advisory Report’s subtitle: Improving Reproducibility in the Empirical Sciences. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation: “The Epistemic Responsibilities of the University” (2016–2019). Rosenberg A. that claimed that an AI system could beat human radiologists in achieving higher robustness and speed in breast cancer screening. As I briefly spelled out above, in laying out Etienne LeBel’s replication taxonomy, a study can be more or less of a replication of an original study.Footnote 30. Replicability of Research Results: A Statement by the German Research Foundation. In this short introduction, we briefly summarise some of the principles, definitions and questions relevant to reproducible research that have emerged in the literature. This is because some humanistic scholars, as we shall see below, think that studies can be perfectly transparent and yet such that they cannot be replicated. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. The differences in the content of these three texts are minor. Mounk, Y. One might think it likely that a replication of any study by members of the one group would lead to substantially different results if carried out by members of the other group. The humanities are to be distinguished from the sciences, where I take the sciences to include the applied sciences, such as medicine, engineering, computer science, and applied physics, the formal sciences, such as decision theory, statistics, systems theory, theoretical computer science, and mathematics, the natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, earth science, ecology, oceanography, geology, meteorology, astronomy, life science, biology, zoology, and botany, and the social sciences, such as criminology, economy, and psychology. Opportunities. After all, as suggested in our discussion above, we want to leave room for the possibility of a direct replication (which uses new data, so that the study as a whole is not replicated), and a conceptual replication (which uses new data and a new research protocol, so that neither the study as a whole nor its specific inferences are replicated). That does not necessarily undermine the value of those replication studies, though revision in background assumptions or change in auxiliary hypotheses may be widely considered to be an improvement in comparison with the original study or a legitimate change for other reasons. A study is being such that a repetition of it has successfully been carried out, producing results that agree with the original study.Footnote 20. Oxford: Blackwell; 2016. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Second, one might think that various methods in the humanities, such as the hermeneutical method in studying a text, do not lend themselves well to replication—at least not as well as certain methods in the quantitative empirical sciences, where one can carry out an experiment with similar data under similar circumstances. Quantitative and qualitative research use different research methodsto collect and analyze data, and they allow you to answer different kinds of research questions. After that, I lay out three reasons for thinking that replication in the humanities is not possible and argue that they are unconvincing. This is not to deny that there may be situations in which there is too much divergence on background assumptions, method, relevant auxiliary hypotheses, and so on, to carry out a replication study. Adelborg K, et al. This is a complex issue that others have addressed in detail. Peels, Rik, Lex Bouter. For example, the new study can depend on the same instruments as those used in the original study, on the same research protocol (e.g., in a repetition of an earlier study), and, in some cases, even on the original researchers or at least partly so in the case of a collaborative team with the original researchers and new researchers. Now, what does a typical replication study look like? A fourth option, not mentioned in the report, is to carry out a replication with the same data and a new or revised research protocol. One of the most important features of a scientific research paper is that the research must be replicable, which means that the paper gives readers enough detailed information that the research can be repeated (or 'replicated'). Third, the objects of humanistic research, in opposition to the objects of research in the natural sciences, are often object with meaning and value, objects such as paintings, texts, statues, and buildings—in opposition to, say, such objects as atoms and viruses that are studied in the natural sciences. Every replication study can be located on a continuum that goes from being a replication almost identical to the original study to hardly being a replication at all. PubMed Google Scholar. 2. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. There are at least two reasons for that. 3. One might think that no such thing takes place when one employs the methods of the humanities. Reconstructing the mind: replicability in research on human development by René van der Veer; Cite. See Lindsay et al. on March 5, 2018. Peels, R. Replicability and replication in the humanities. They did so by trying to get bogus papers published in influential academic journals in fields such as feminism studies, gender studies, race studies, and sexuality studies. research paradigm, triangulation as used in quantitative research to test the reliability and validity can also illuminate some ways to test or maximize the validity and reliability of a qualitative study. Exactly what is it, though, for results to be commensurate? As will become clear from what follows in this section, the phenomena of robustness, reliability, and verifiability, thus understood, are in interesting ways related to, but nevertheless clearly conceptually distinct from replication, replicability, reproduction, and reproducibility. scientific research paper is that the research, must be replicable, which means that the paper gives readers enough detailed information that. Footnote 21 Clearly, replicability, as I understand it here, has much to do with transparency: a study can be replicated only if the researchers are sufficiently transparent about the data, the method, the inferences, and so on. Cambridge: Cambridge University; 1997. Springer Nature. Nosek BA, Errington TM. The New Perspective has been embraced by most Roman Catholic and Orthodox theologians and a substantial number of Protestants theologians, but is still very much under debate. Badly specified theories are not responsible for the replication crisis in social psychology: comment on Klein. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press; 2007. 2005;2(8):e124. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. Viruses, atoms, leg fractures, Borneo’s rhinos, economic measures, and many other study objects in the empirical sciences, have multiple instances. We can be rather brief about the term “humanities.” There is a debate on what should count as a humanistic discipline and what not. Here is another example of a study that employs the hermeneutical method. Take the hermeneutical method. In this project, we assess replicability in Computer Graphics, by evaluating whether the code is available and whether it works properly. See http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49906, last visited May 1, 2018. The crucial difference with the previous example is that this is still a hotly debated issue and that it is not clear exactly what counts as a replication, since it is not clear that advocates and opponents share enough background beliefs in order to properly execute a replication study; only the future will tell us whether that is indeed the case. The KNAW [10] report, for instance, does not. As readers, we cannot know for sure whether researchers have misrepresented or lied about their findings, but we can always ask whether the paper gives us enough detail to be able to replicate the research. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 2008. Harold Chike. The issue of replicability and replication in academic research is important for various reasons. Lorenz C. Constructing the past. We find the same idea among certain neo-Kantians; see, for instance, [29]. 2018 forthcoming. Science. The report recommends a range of steps that stakeholders in the research enterprise should take to improve reproducibility and replicability, including: All researchers should include a clear, specific, and complete description of how the reported results were reached. One can generate new data, thus making it likely—if replications consistently deliver sufficiently similar results—that the original results are true. Kukla A. If the paper explained in detail how the research was carried out, other researchers would be able to repeat the research and either confirm or oppose the findings. In simple terms, research reliability is the degree to which research method produces stable and consistent results. Book. In this article, I will take each of the reports mentioned above into consideration, but pay special attention to the KNAW report, since it is the most recent one and it has taken the findings of the other reports into account. Sections. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. Front Psychol. Radder H. The material realization of science: from Habermas to experimentation and referential realism. For a good synopsis of the report and its findings, we recommend reading the 2019 article, "New report examines reproducibility and replicability in science. Reliability and Replicability Previous Next. See [14, 15], and a recent co-authored blog: [16]. Replication is both possible and desirable in the humanities, just as it is in the sciences, London School of Economics and Political Science Impact Blog, 10 October. How we should think of replication in the humanities is something that has not received any attention so far, except for a couple of articles that I co-authored with Lex Bouter.Footnote 10 Maybe this is because it is questionable whether replication is even possible in the humanities. The first objection to the idea that replication is possible in the humanities is that, frequently, the study object in the humanities is uniqueFootnote 32: there was one French Revolution in 1789–1799, there is one novel of Virginia Woolf named To the Lighthouse (1928), pieces of architecture, such as Magdalen College’s library in Oxford, are unique, and so on. Windelband W, Oakes G. History and Natural Science. I would be happy, though, to embrace the definitions given of these terms in the KNAW Advisory Report, viz. Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science. This is not to deny that Popper himself thought falsification to be a good thing, since he believed scientific progress to consist of instances of falsification (see [25], 215–250). Google Scholar. Dependence, however, is a matter of degree: one can, for instance, assume certain results or certain aspects of certain results in order to replicate other results or other aspects of results. The objection is that even though replication may well be possible in the humanities, it is not particularly desirable—not something to aim at or invest research money on—because there is simply too much disagreement in the humanities for there to be a successful replication sufficiently often. For example, in ethnography replicability is not necessarily meaningful because the researcher takes on the role of the research instrument (Welch & Piekkari, 2017 ). The way in which researchers in animal model research deal with the problem of plasticity and historicity shows that they don’t abandon the ideal of replicability when standardization and control become problematic. We argued that the prevalent use of questionable research practices (John et al., 2012), researcher’s degrees of freedom (Simmons et al., 2011), and HARKing can also account for the replicability crisis. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-018-0060-4, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-018-0060-4. The aforementioned KNAW Advisory Report sketches four characteristics: it “(a) is carried out by a team of independent investigators; (b) generates new data; (c) follows the original protocol closely and justifies any deviations; and (d) attempts to explain the resulting degree of reproducibility.”.Footnote 28 Thus, even though, as I pointed out above, independence does not require that the replication study be carried out by different researchers than the original study, this is nonetheless often the case. Nature. Reliability and Replicability Search form. There are at least two complicating factors when it comes to the issue of replication in the humanities: there is a wide variety of terms and many of these terms have no definition that is widely agreed upon. However, given the epistemic and pragmatic reasons to do so, carrying out at least some replication studies would be good for the humanities and for how they are publicly perceived. Paul and Palestinian Judaism: a comparison of patterns of religion. Also, even if the study’s background assumptions are different and various auxiliary hypotheses differ, the study may still be successfully replicated. Theory Psychol. The DataVerse Network project (8) promotes sharing, citing, using, and archiving scientific data for reproducible research. Rescuing replicability by abandoning standardization. 0021):1–9. Ray JD. This leaves plenty of room for replication in disciplines that are empirical, such as literary studies, linguistics, history, and the study of the arts. Open Science Collaboration. On the one hand, many study objects in the humanities do have multiple instances. Introduction. Among them are (i) fraud, falsification, and plagiarism, (ii) questionable research practices, partly due to unhealthy research systems with perverse publication incentives, (iii) human error, (iv) changes in conditions and circumstances, (v) lack of effective peer review, and (vi) lack of rigor.Footnote 6 Thus, we also need a wide variety of measures to improve on replicability. iv) Replicability Replicability in scientific research cohorts that the results of the research or the tests of the hypothesis should be supported again and again when the research is repeated in other similar circumstances, the Replicability gives confidence in our research design and hence makes it scientific. Then, it seems possible to uncover such knowledge and understanding about the aspects that involve value and meaning multiple times for the same or similar objects. Bouter [12] further analyzes the causes for various kinds of questionable research practices. icon-arrow-top icon-arrow-top. One of the things the replication crisis has made clear is that many studies in the empirical sciences fail to meet the criterion of replicability: we cannot carry out a replication study of them, since the key terms are not even sufficiently clearly defined, the method is underdescribed, the discussion is not transparent, the raw data are not presented in a lucid way, or the analysis of the data is not clearly described. J Pers Soc Psychol. Handlexikon der Wissenschaftstheorie. Along with individual misconduct, there are also structural reasons for the quality problem in research. Popper KR. 2018. https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/grievance-studieshoax-not-academic-scandal.html. Front. What is the Understanding Health Research tool? Rigour in quantitative research is often determined through detailed explanation allowing replication, but the ability to replicate is often not considered appropriate in qualitative research. The stronger the criterion for the sense in which studies results “agree,” the lower—ceteris paribus—the percentage of successful replications will be, at least when it comes to quantitative empirical research. I said “roughly,” because, as Brian Earp has argued in more detail, things are never so simple when it comes to falsification: even if an attempt at falsification has taken place and the new data seem to count against the original hypothesis, one might often just as well, say, question an auxiliary assumption, consider whether a mistake was made in the original study, or wonder whether perhaps the original effect is a genuine effect but one that can only be obtained under specific conditions.Footnote 23 Nevertheless, falsification is often still considered as a useful heuristic in judging the strength of a hypothesis.Footnote 24 Now, the obvious difference with the issue at hand is that, even though both falsifiability and replicability are desiderata, replication is a good thing, because it makes it, all else being equal, likely that results are true, whereas falsification is in a sense a bad thing, because it makes it likely that a theory is false.Footnote 25. However, if the paper did not explain how the research was carried out, readers would have no way of testing the controversial conclusions. Trafimow D, Earp BD. Moreover, in December 2017, the National American Academies convened the first meeting of a new study committee that will, for a period of 18 months, study “Reproducibility and Replicability in Science,” a project funded by the National Science Foundation.Footnote 4 Finally, over the last few years, various official reports on replication have been published. Finally, I thank Brian Nosek and an anonymous referee for their constructive review of the paper for this journal. Dordrecht: Springer; 2012. LeCompte and Goetz (1982), for example, make a useful distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ reliability. However, a well described qualitative methodology could demonstrate and ensure the same effect. J Clin Epidemiol. the research can be repeated (or 'replicated'). It means that a study should produce the same results if repeated exactly, either by the same researcher or by another. 2018 https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/. Among these, we … New York: Norton; 2012. If the research is replicable, then any false conclusions can eventually be shown to be wrong. University of Nigeria. In Quantitative research, reliability refers to consistency of certain measurements, and validity – to whether these measurements “measure what they are supposed to measure”. Replicability is a subtle and nuanced topic, especially when discussed broadly across scientific and engineering research. This is important, for it means that even the specific way in which a replication study is supposed to be carried out can be copied in a replication study in the humanities.
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