Replication, Communication, and the Population Dynamics of Scientific Discovery.

ABSTRACT: Many published research results are false (Ioannidis, 2005), and controversy continues over the roles of replication and publication policy in improving the reliability of research. Addressing these problems is frustrated by the lack of a formal framework that jointly represents hypothesis formation, replication, publication bias, and variation in research quality. We develop a mathematical model of scientific discovery that combines all of these elements. This model provides both a dynamic model of research as well as a formal framework for reasoning about the normative structure of science. We show that replication may serve as a ratchet that gradually separates true hypotheses from false, but the same factors that make initial findings unreliable also make replications unreliable. The m

SUBMITTER: McElreath R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4550284 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature