Motherhood, apple pie and replication

Who could possibly be against replication of research results? Jason Mitchell of Harvard University is, under some conditions, for reasons described in his essay On the emptiness of failed replications.

I wrote something for the Centre for Open Science which tries to draw out the sensible points in Mitchell’s essay – something I thought worth doing since for many people being against replication in science is like being against motherhood and apple pie. It’s worth noting that I was invited to do this by Brian Nosek, who is co-founder of the Center for Open Science and instrumental in the Many Labs projects. As such, Brian is implicitly one of the targets of Mitchell’s criticisms, so kudos to him for encouraging this discussion.

Here’s my commentary: What Jason Mitchell’s ‘On the emptiness of failed replications’ gets right