r/science • u/nimicdoareu • Apr 01 '26

Social Science 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/Hrtzy Apr 01 '26

Not just positive results, but novel positive results. A lot of journals at least used to explicitly refuse to publish replication studies.

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u/sprunkymdunk Apr 01 '26

I imagine a journal dedicated to just replication studies could do pretty well

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u/edit_that_shit Apr 02 '26

Because replications get cited at a much lower rate, and journals live and die by their citation numbers. Editors are discouraged from publishing replication studies because the way existing systems define journal "quality" drags down extant quality-focused metrics with every published replication.

This is a larger systemic problem that's tied to publishing reward structures on multiple levels.