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  1. (1 other version)When “replicability” is more than just “reliability”: The Hubble constant controversy.Vera Matarese & C. D. McCoy - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 107:1-10.
    We propose that the epistemic functions of replication in science are best understood by relating them to kinds of experimental error/uncertainty. One kind of replication, which we call “direct replications,” principally serves to assess the reliability of an experiment through its precision: the presence and degree of random error/statistical uncertainty. The other kind of replication, which we call “conceptual replications,” principally serves to assess the validity of an experiment through its accuracy: the presence and degree of systematic errors/uncertainties. To illustrate (...)
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  • From Model Performance to Claim: How a Change of Focus in Machine Learning Replicability Can Help Bridge the Responsibility Gap.Tianqi Kou - manuscript
    Two goals - improving replicability and accountability of Machine Learning research respectively, have accrued much attention from the AI ethics and the Machine Learning community. Despite sharing the measures of improving transparency, the two goals are discussed in different registers - replicability registers with scientific reasoning whereas accountability registers with ethical reasoning. Given the existing challenge of the Responsibility Gap - holding Machine Learning scientists accountable for Machine Learning harms due to them being far from sites of application, this paper (...)
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  • Conflicting Results and Statistical Malleability: Embracing Pluralism of Empirical Results.Mariusz Maziarz - 2024 - Perspectives on Science 32 (6):701-728.
    Conflicting results undermine making inferences from the empirical literature. So far, the replication crisis is mainly seen as resulting from honest errors and questionable research practices such as p-hacking or the base-rate fallacy. I discuss the malleability (researcher degrees of freedom) of quantitative research and argue that conflicting results can emerge from two studies using different but plausible designs (e.g., eligibility criteria, operationalization of concepts, outcome measures) and statistical methods. I also explore how the choices regarding study design and statistical (...)
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  • Questionable metascience practices.Mark Rubin - 2023 - Journal of Trial and Error 1.
    Metascientists have studied questionable research practices in science. The present article considers the parallel concept of questionable metascience practices (QMPs). A QMP is a research practice, assumption, or perspective that has been questioned by several commentators as being potentially problematic for metascience and/or the science reform movement. The present article reviews ten QMPs that relate to criticism, replication, bias, generalization, and the characterization of science. Specifically, the following QMPs are considered: (1) rejecting or ignoring self-criticism; (2) a fast ‘n’ bropen (...)
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  • The Replication Crisis is Less of a “Crisis” in Lakatos’ Philosophy of Science.Mark Rubin - manuscript
    Popper’s (1983, 2002) philosophy of science has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the wake of the replication crisis, offering a philosophical basis for the ensuing science reform movement. However, adherence to Popper’s approach may also be at least partly responsible for the sense of “crisis” that has developed following multiple unexpected replication failures. In this article, I contrast Popper’s approach with Lakatos’ (1978) approach and a related approach called naïve methodological falsificationism (NMF; Lakatos, 1978). The Popperian approach is powerful (...)
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  • Epistemic Functions of Replicability in Experimental Sciences: Defending the Orthodox View.Michał Sikorski & Mattia Andreoletti - 2023 - Foundations of Science (4):1071-1088.
    Replicability is widely regarded as one of the defining features of science and its pursuit is one of the main postulates of meta-research, a discipline emerging in response to the replicability crisis. At the same time, replicability is typically treated with caution by philosophers of science. In this paper, we reassess the value of replicability from an epistemic perspective. We defend the orthodox view, according to which replications are always epistemically useful, against the more prudent view that claims that it (...)
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  • Goal-directed Uses of the Replicability Concept (Preprint).Eden Tariq Smith, Hannah Fraser, Steven Kambouris, Fallon Mody, Martin Bush & Fiona Fidler - forthcoming - In Corrine Bloch-Mullins & Theodore Arabatzis (eds.), Concepts, Induction, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge.
    The replicability of a research claim is often positioned as an important step in establishing the credibility of scientific research. This expectation persists despite ongoing disagreements over how to characterise replication practices in various contexts. Rather than attempt to explain or resolve these disagreements, we propose that there is value in exploring the variable uses of the replicability concept. To this end, we treat the replicability concept as a goal-directed tool for studying scientific practices. This approach extends scholarship on the (...)
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  • Data quality, experimental artifacts, and the reactivity of the psychological subject matter.Uljana Feest - 2022 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1):1-25.
    While the term “reactivity” has come to be associated with specific phenomena in the social sciences, having to do with subjects’ awareness of being studied, this paper takes a broader stance on this concept. I argue that reactivity is a ubiquitous feature of the psychological subject matter and that this fact is a precondition of experimental research, while also posing potential problems for the experimenter. The latter are connected to the worry about distorted data and experimental artifacts. But what are (...)
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  • The new demarcation problem.Bennett Holman & Torsten Wilholt - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C):211-220.
    There is now a general consensus amongst philosophers in the values in science literature that values necessarily play a role in core areas of scientific inquiry. We argue that attention should now be turned from debating the value-free ideal to delineating legitimate from illegitimate influences of values in science, a project we dub “The New Demarcation Problem.” First, we review past attempts to demarcate the uses of values and propose a categorization of the strategies by where they seek to draw (...)
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  • Epistemic interests and the objectivity of inquiry.Torsten Wilholt - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 91 (C):86-93.
    This paper advocates for making epistemic interests a central object of philosophical analysis in epistemology and philosophy of science. It is argued that the importance of epistemic interests derives from their fundamental importance for the notion of objectivity. Epistemic interests are defined as individuated by a set of objectives, each of which represents a dimension of the search for truth. Among these dimensions, specificity, sensitivity, and productivity are discussed in detail. It is argued that the relevance of productivity is often (...)
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  • The role of replication in psychological science.Samuel C. Fletcher - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (1):1-19.
    The replication or reproducibility crisis in psychological science has renewed attention to philosophical aspects of its methodology. I provide herein a new, functional account of the role of replication in a scientific discipline: to undercut the underdetermination of scientific hypotheses from data, typically by hypotheses that connect data with phenomena. These include hypotheses that concern sampling error, experimental control, and operationalization. How a scientific hypothesis could be underdetermined in one of these ways depends on a scientific discipline’s epistemic goals, theoretical (...)
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  • Philosophy of science and the replicability crisis.Felipe Romero - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (11):e12633.
    Replicability is widely taken to ground the epistemic authority of science. However, in recent years, important published findings in the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences have failed to replicate, suggesting that these fields are facing a “replicability crisis.” For philosophers, the crisis should not be taken as bad news but as an opportunity to do work on several fronts, including conceptual analysis, history and philosophy of science, research ethics, and social epistemology. This article introduces philosophers to these discussions. First, I (...)
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  • Persistent evidential discordance.Samuli Reijula & Sofia Blanco Sequeiros - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
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  • Explicating Exact versus Conceptual Replication.Robert Hudson - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (6):2493-2514.
    What does it mean to replicate an experiment? A distinction is often drawn between ‘exact’ (or ‘direct’) and ‘conceptual’ replication. However, in recent work, Uljana Feest argues that the notion of replication in itself, whether exact or conceptual, is flawed due to the problem of systematic error, and Edouard Machery argues that, although the notion of replication is not flawed, we should nevertheless dispense with the distinction between exact and conceptual replication. My plan in this paper is to defend the (...)
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  • “It might be this, it should be that…” uncertainty and doubt in day-to-day research practice.Jutta Schickore & Nora Hangel - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (2):1-21.
    This paper examines how scientists conceptualize their research methodologies. Do scientists raise concerns about vague criteria and genuine uncertainties in experimental practice? If so, what sorts of issues do they identify as problematic? Do scientists acknowledge the presence of value judgments in scientific research, and do they reflect on the relation between epistemic and non-epistemic criteria for decisionmaking? We present findings from an analysis of qualitative interviews with 63 scientific researchers who talk about their views on good research practice. We (...)
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  • The Division of Replication Labor.Romero Felipe - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (5):1014-1025.
    Scientists are becoming increasingly aware of a “replicability crisis” in the behavioral, social, and biomedical sciences. Researchers have made progress identifying statistical and methodological...
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  • Latent variables, psychological constructs, and the prospect of scientific kinds in psychology.Marion Godman & Martin Bellander - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    In this paper, we consider how latent variables of mainstream quantitative psychology fits with two different models of scientific kinds. On the one hand, there is a good reason to think they fit with taxonomic and predictive success criteria that are popular within an epistemic understanding of scientific kinds. On the other hand, they conflict with widely shared person-based ontological commitments that underwrite psychological kinds because this research rests in large part on between-individual studies. We explore the implications of the (...)
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  • Reproducibility and Instruction Following in the Shop Floor Laboratory Work: The Case of a TMS Experiment.Kristina Popova - 2022 - Science, Technology, and Human Values 47 (5):882-909.
    The article addresses the production of reproducibility as a topic that has become acutely relevant in the recent discussions on the replication crisis in science. It brings the ethnomethodological stance on reproducibility into the discussions, claiming that reproducibility is necessarily produced locally, on the shop floor, with methodological guidelines serving as references to already established practices rather than their origins. The article refers to this argument empirically, analyzing how a group of novice neuroscientists performs a series of measurements in a (...)
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  • Replication, uncertainty and progress in comparative cognition.Alexandria Boyle - 2021 - Animal Behaviour and Cognition 8 (2):296-304.
    Replications are often taken to play both epistemic and demarcating roles in science: they provide evidence about the reliability of fields’ methods and, by extension, about which fields “count” as scientific. I argue that, in a field characterized by a high degree of theoretical openness and uncertainty, like comparative cognition, replications do not sit well in these roles. Like other experiments conducted under conditions of uncertainty, replications are often equivocal and open to interpretation. As a result, they are poorly placed (...)
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  • When should researchers cite study differences in response to a failure to replicate?David Colaço, Bradley Walters & John Bickle - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (5):1-17.
    Scientists often respond to failures to replicate by citing differences between the experimental components of an original study and those of its attempted replication. In this paper, we investigate these purported mismatch explanations. We assess a body of failures to replicate in neuroscience studies on spinal cord injury. We argue that a defensible mismatch explanation is one where a mismatch of components is a difference maker for a mismatch of outcomes, and the components are relevantly different in the follow-up study, (...)
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  • Publish without bias or perish without replications.Rafael Ventura - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 96 (C):10-17.
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