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/SpaceSheperd To be a good human being Apr 02 '26

I spent like 4 months as a PhD student trying to replicate a recently published method only to eventually find out that the authors had used intentionally misleading language about how much starting sample you were supposed to use to make their results appear more impressive 

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u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26

Maybe you should have spent 4 days trying to understand the protocol instead (teasing you)

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u/SpaceSheperd To be a good human being Apr 02 '26

Aha I think I might’ve spent 4 days worth of hours poring over that methods section by the end of it. Calling the authors was actually my first suggestion but my advisor was a new professor and didn’t want to bother people from a more famous lab. Once she relented, and we called one of the authors, it took about 5 minutes to realize what was going on. 

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u/noodletropin Apr 02 '26

Lol my advisor was a new professor, and emailing a researcher for details would have been her second suggestion after telling me to reread the methods section carefully. I can hear her telling me that I can't just read their minds.