Goettingen University: Project fosters Replication in Economics

There are many good reasons why we should replicate scientific findings. In his article “Open Access Economics Journals and the Market for Reproducible Economic Research“, the economist B.D. McCullough (2009) lists some of the reasons why replicable research is crucial for science:

„[…]replication ensures that the method used to produce the results is known. Whether the results are correct or not is another matter, but unless everyone knows how the results were produced, their correctness cannot be assessed. Replicable research is subject to the scientific principle of verification; non-replicable research cannot be verified. Second, and more importantly, replicable research speeds scientific progress. We are all familiar with Newton’s quote, ‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ […] Third, researchers will have an incentive to avoid sloppiness. […] Fourth, the incidence of fraud will decrease.“ (p.118)

More recently, the case of the US-economists Rogoff and Reinhart clearly illustrated the need for replications to be much more common in science and scientific education. But… Read the rest of this entry »