Epistemic Functions of Replicability in Experimental Sciences: Defending the Orthodox View.

Found Sci

Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.

Published: February 2023

AI Article Synopsis

  • Replicability is essential in science and is central to meta-research, which addresses the current replicability crisis.
  • This paper argues that replications are always epistemically valuable, countering the idea that their usefulness is limited to specific situations.
  • The authors emphasize that conducting replications at various levels enhances understanding of both the original experiment and the limits of its findings, reinforcing the importance of replicability in scientific research.

Article Abstract

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 is useful in very limited circumstances. Additionally, we argue that we can learn more about the original experiment and the limits of the discovered effect from replications at different levels. We hold that replicability is a crucial feature of experimental results and scientists should continue to strive to secure it.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11569024PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10699-023-09901-4DOI Listing

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