Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T16:51:28.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A New Account of Replication in the Experimental Life Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Stephan Guttinger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The life sciences are said to be in the midst of a replication crisis because (1) a majority of published results are irreproducible, and (2) scientists rarely replicate existing data. Here I argue that point 2 of this assessment is flawed because there is a hitherto unidentified form of replication in the experimental life sciences, which I call ‘microreplications’ (MRs). Using a case study from biochemistry, I illustrate how MRs depend on a key element of experimentation, namely, experimental controls. I end by reflecting on what MRs mean for the broader debate about the replication crisis.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 86 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 453 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

To contact the author, please write to: Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics, Lakatos Building, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE; e-mail: s.m.guettinger@lse.ac.uk.

†

I would like to thank John Dupré, Roman Frigg, Sabina Leonelli, Jutta Schikore, and Nicolas Wüthrich for critical input on this or an earlier version of this article. The research leading to this article received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant PA00P1_134166) and the European Research Council (grant 324186) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013).

References

Alberts, Bruce, Kirschner, Marc W., Tilghman, Shirley, and Varmus, Harold. 2014. “Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (16): 5773–77..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baker, Lisa M., and Dunbar, Kevin. 2000. “Experimental Design Heuristics for Scientific Discovery: The Use of Baseline and Known Standard Controls.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 53 (3): 335–49..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Monya. 2016a. “How Quality Control Could Save Your Science.” Nature 529 (7587): 456–58..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Monya. 2016b. “Is There a Reproducibility Crisis?” Nature 533 (7604): 452–55..Google Scholar
Begley, C. Glenn. 2013. “Reproducibility: Six Red Flags for Suspect Work.” Nature 497 (7450): 433–34..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Begley, C. Glenn, Buchan, Alastair M., and Dirnagl, Ulrich. 2015. “Robust Research: Institutions Must Do Their Part for Reproducibility.” Nature 525 (7567): 25–27..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Begley, C. Glenn, and Ellis, Lee M.. 2012. “Drug Development: Raise Standards for Preclinical Cancer Research.” Nature 483 (7391): 531–33..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bogen, Jim. 2001. “‘Two as Good as a Hundred’: Poorly Replicated Evidence in Some Nineteenth-Century Neuroscientific Research.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science C 32 (3): 491–533..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burian, Richard M. 1997. “Exploratory Experimentation and the Role of Histochemical Techniques in the Work of Jean Brachet, 1938–1952.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 19 (1): 27–45..Google ScholarPubMed
Burian, Richard M.. 2007. “On MicroRNA and the Need for Exploratory Experimentation in Post-genomic Molecular Biology.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 29 (3): 285–312..Google ScholarPubMed
Casadevall, Arturo, and Fang, Ferric C.. 2010. “Reproducible Science.” Infection and Immunity 78 (12): 4972–75..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collins, Francis S., and Tabak, Lawrence A.. 2014. “NIH Plans to Enhance Reproducibility.” Nature 505 (7485): 612.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collins, Harry. 1985. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Drummond, Chris. 2009. “Replicability Is Not Reproducibility: Nor Is It Good Science.” Presented at the Evaluation Methods for Machine Learning Workshop at the 26th International Conference on Machine Learning, Montreal.Google Scholar
Elliott, Kevin C. 2007. “Varieties of Exploratory Experimentation in Nanotoxicology.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 29 (3): 313–36..Google ScholarPubMed
Fanelli, Daniele. 2018. “Opinion: Is Science Really Facing a Reproducibility Crisis, and Do We Need It To?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (11): 2628–31..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Firestein, Stuart. 2015. Failure: Why Science Is So Successful. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, Laura R. 2005. “Exploratory Experiments.” Philosophy of Science 72 (5): 888–99..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodman, Steven N., Fanelli, Daniele, and Ioannidis, John P. A.. 2016. “What Does Research Reproducibility Mean?” Science Translational Medicine 8 (341): 341ps12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grinnell, Frederick. 1992. The Scientific Attitude. New York: Guildford.Google Scholar
Guttinger, Stephan. 2018. “Replications Everywhere: Why the Replication Crisis Might Be Less Severe than It Seems at First.” BioEssays 40 (7): 1800055.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ioannidis, John P. A. 2012. “Why Science Is Not Necessarily Self-Correcting.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7 (6): 645–54..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iqbal, Shareen A., Wallach, Joshua D., Khoury, Muin J., Schully, Sheri D., and Ioannidis, John P. A.. 2016. “Reproducible Research Practices and Transparency across the Biomedical Literature.” PLoS Biology 14 (1): e1002333.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karaca, Koray. 2013. “The Strong and Weak Senses of Theory-Ladenness of Experimentation: Theory-Driven versus Exploratory Experiments in the History of High-Energy Particle Physics.” Science in Context 26 (1): 93–136..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landis, Story C., et al. 2012. “A Call for Transparent Reporting to Optimize the Predictive Value of Preclinical Research.” Nature 490 (7419): 187–91..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makel, Matthew C., Plucker, Jonathan A., and Hegarty, Boyd. 2012. “Replications in Psychology Research: How Often Do They Really Occur?” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7 (6): 537–42..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Munafò, Marcus R., Nosek, Brian A., Bishop, Dorothy V. M., Button, Katherine S., Chambers, Christopher D., Percie du Sert, Nathalie, Simonsohn, Uri, Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan, Ware, Jennifer J., and Ioannidis, John P. A.. 2017. “A Manifesto for Reproducible Science.” Nature Human Behaviour 1:0021.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O’Malley, Maureen A. 2007. “Exploratory Experimentation and Scientific Practice: Metagenomics and the Proteorhodopsin Case.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 29 (3): 337–58..Google ScholarPubMed
Prinz, Florian, Schlange, Thomas, and Asadullah, Khusru. 2011. “Believe It or Not: How Much Can We Rely on Published Data on Potential Drug Targets?” Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 10 (9): 712–13..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Redish, A. David, Kummerfeld, Erich, Morris, Rebecca Lea, and Love, Alan C.. 2018. “Opinion: Reproducibility Failures Are Essential to Scientific Inquiry.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 (20): 5042–46..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Romero, Felipe. 2017. “Novelty versus Replicability: Virtues and Vices in the Reward System of Science.” Philosophy of Science 84 (5): 1031–43..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenblatt, Michael. 2016. “An Incentive-Based Approach for Improving Data Reproducibility.” Science Translational Medicine 8:336ed5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sarewitz, Daniel. 2016a. “The Pressure to Publish Pushes Down Quality.” Nature 533 (7602): 147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarewitz, Daniel. 2016b. “Saving Science.” New Atlantis 49:4–40.Google Scholar
Schickore, Jutta. 2017. About Method: Experimenters, Snake Venom, and the History of Writing Scientifically. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Stefan. 2009. “Shall We Really Do It Again? The Powerful Concept of Replication Is Neglected in the Social Sciences.” Review of General Psychology 13 (2): 90–100..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soler, Léna, Trizio, Emiliano, Nickles, Thomas, and Wimsatt, William, eds. 2012. Characterizing the Robustness of Science: After the Practice Turn in Philosophy of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science 292. Berlin: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinle, Friedrich. 1997. “Entering New Fields: Exploratory Uses of Experimentation.” Philosophy of Science 64 (Proceedings): S65–S74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinle, Friedrich. 2002. “Experiments in History and Philosophy of Science.” Perspectives on Science 10 (4): 408–32..Google Scholar
Waters, C. Kenneth. 2007. “The Nature and Context of Exploratory Experimentation: An Introduction to Three Case Studies of Exploratory Research.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 29 (3): 275–84..Google ScholarPubMed