Replication Crisis

Replication crisis is the research credibility problem in Don’t hate the replicator, hate the game: published findings may fail when researchers rerun code, inspect data, or test reasonable alternative analytical choices. The episode says the crisis began visibly in psychology and spread to fields such as medicine and economics.

The source frames the crisis as a system problem. P-Hacking, Publication Bias, weak [[ReplicationPackage|replication packages]], and untested Robustness Checks can all appear without career-ending fraud, because ordinary incentives push researchers toward clean, novel, significant results.

Key Claims

• Replication failure can mean code does not run, data does not match, variables are undocumented, or conclusions disappear under reasonable alternative specifications.
• The crisis is not limited to psychology; the episode treats economics and wider social science as affected.
• Preregistration and data/code disclosure reduce some ambiguity but need actual inspection to matter.
• Post-publication discovery is useful but still signals that peer review and journal processes missed something important.
• The repair path combines Scientific Self-Correction with Research Integrity Incentives that change the expected behavior before publication.

Connections

• Abel Brodeur, Institute For Replication, and Replication Games - central source actors and project.
• P-Hacking, Publication Bias, and Statistical Significance Threshold - incentive and measurement branch.
• Replication Package, Preregistration, and Robustness Checks - practical reproducibility tools.
• Scientific Skepticism, Observation Before Inference, and Economist Trust Crisis - broader evidence and trust frame.