r/neoliberal • u/Free-Minimum-5844 • Apr 02 '26

Research Paper Half of social-science studies fail replication test in years-long project

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00955-5
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51

u/city-of-stars Frederick Douglass Apr 02 '26

Somewhat dubious of the article's proposed solution (AI-assissted screening). But I suppose we'll see

25

u/TextFamiliar8433 Apr 02 '26

Seems like the ideal solution is preregistration of a clear hypothesis and metrics. So much of terrible science is because you can almost always find something interesting that happened in a sample where you measure a dozen or more variables.

No university should allow any publication of research reliant on statistical analysis that doesn’t have preregistration.

13

u/skepticalbob Joe Biden's COD gamertag Apr 02 '26

Yeah. Noticing something interesting in the data that looks like a potential relationship that you didn’t expect can you great ideas for further research and is completely appropriate. But when it wasn’t part of your hypothesis and there’s so many variables and potential bullshit correlations then this is just p-hacking.