UW researchers say fewer than half of psychology studies can replicate original results
Posted Aug 28, 2015 01:12:53 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
According to University of Waterloo researchers, fewer than half of psychology studies published can replicate their original results.
Published today in the journal Science, the Reproducibility Project: Psychology found that only 35 of 100 attempted replications produced the same findings as the original study.
The project, launched nearly four years ago, asked 270 researchers around the world to replicate studies published in prominent psychology journals.
The study reports that failure to reproduce does not necessarily mean that the original research was incorrect.
Researchers involved in the project noted that even though most teams worked with the original authors to use the same materials and methods, small differences in when, where, or how they conducted the replication study might have influenced the results.
