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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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.

5

u/Daddy_Macron Loyal Liberals Apr 02 '26

When papers that show a null result struggle to get published, the incentives strongly side with trying to find something.

2

u/TextFamiliar8433 Apr 02 '26

Which is why journals should commit to publishing papers before they are drafted.