Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015

Colin F. Camerer, Anna Dreber, Felix Holzmeister, Teck Ho (), Jürgen Huber, Magnus Johannesson, Michael Kirchler, Gideon Nave, Brian A. Nosek, Thomas Pfeiffer, Adam Altmejd, Nick Buttrick, Taizan Chan, Yiling Chen, Eskil Forsell, Anup Gampa, Emma Heikensten, Lily Hummer, Taisuke Imai, Siri Isaksson, Dylan Manfredi, Julia Rose (), Eric-Jan Wagenmakers and Hang Wu ()

Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: Being able to replicate scientific findings is crucial for scientific progress1-15. We replicate 21 systematically selected experimental studies in the social sciences published in Nature and Science between 2010 and 201516-36. The replications follow analysis plans reviewed by the original authors and pre-registered prior to the replications. The replications are high powered, with sample sizes on average about five times higher than in the original studies. We find a significant effect in the same direction as the original study for 13 (62%) studies, and the effect size of the replications is on average about 50% of the original effect size. Replicability varies between 12 (57%) and 14 (67%) studies for complementary replicability indicators. Consistent with these results, the estimated truepositive rate is 67% in a Bayesian analysis. The relative effect size of true positives is estimated to be 71%, suggesting that both false positives and inflated effect sizes of true positives contribute to imperfect reproducibility. Furthermore, we find that peer beliefs of replicability are strongly related to replicability, suggesting that the research community could predict which results would replicate and that failures to replicate were not the result of chance alone.

Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (93)

Published in Nature Human Behaviour 9 2(2018): pp. 637-644

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Journal Article: Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015 (2018)
Working Paper: Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015 (2018)
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