The role of expertise in assessing the replicability of research

On 24 November, we welcome Alexandru Marcoci (University of Dundee) to SKAPE as part of our seminar series. Please find the abstract here:

Over the last decade, several studies attempting to replicate published findings in the social and behavioural sciences have brought the evidence base in those disciplines into question. In response to this replication crisis, journals, and both public and private funders are now supporting and facilitating replication studies, and demanding new work meets openness and transparency guidelines. But replications of individual studies are resource intensive, the volume of results in need of replication is overwhelming, and crisis situations call for rapid policy implementation of emerging research. Therefore, techniques for predicting replicability are (also) required. Whose judgments should we rely on for making these predictions? Much has been written about experts (with traditional credentials) performing only marginally better than random chance when predicting the future of financial, social and political outcomes. And most papers that were found not to replicate had passed peer-review. This paper investigates the role that expertise plays in making accurate judgments about the quality of research in the social and behavioural sciences.

Joint work with Hannah Fraser, Anca Hanea, Ans Vercammen, Bonnie C. Wintle, Fiona Fidler and David Wilkinson (University of Melbourne).

All SKAPE seminars will take place online via Zoom in autumn 2021 (for link details, please email the Co-Directors – if you are already a member/associate member of SKAPE, then you will receive a Zoom link two days before the start of the event).