Uploaded November 2018 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
The last five years have unfolded a deep controversy over scientific replication, with substantial and ongoing impacts on the trustworthiness of science and its routine working standards in the biological, bio-medical, bio-psychological and psychological research. As a philosopher of science, an important inquiry in this context is to study the existing meanings of ‘replication’ and ‘reproducibility’, in the hope of articulating a more coherent and useful concept of replication. It should be clear enough, broadly applicable enough, and provide specific enough tools to answer two crucial questions for any scientific endeavor: to what degree are the results accurate and how generalizable are they? The first question asks whether the description of the observed results more accurately fit a description of a causal, a random or some other sequence of events? Further, even if the results are “statistically significant” (i.e. non-random), are they reproducible with repeated measurements? The first question in effect deals with the realism of a scientific description and analysis, i.e. what "actually" happened in a certain place and time, while the second question deals with the generality of that analysis and its predictions: to what degree is a result observed for a given population—whether random or not—representative of other populations? These two questions are not the same, yet both address the challenge of replication, and both are concurrently required yet typically conflict in answering research questions that use local knowledge of heterogenous populations. In this paper I will unfold the various dimensions of this accuracy-generalizability conflict within the concept of replication in the biological sciences, and sketch a possible resolution, since a general solution is currently not in sight.
Ayelet Shavit, Tel-Hai College
Rotman 2018 Annual Conference: Understanding Replication Across the Sciences
October 13, 2018
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The last five years have unfolded a deep controversy over scientific replication, with substantial and ongoing impacts on the trustworthiness of science and its routine working standards in the biological, bio-medical, bio-psychological and psychological research. As a philosopher of science, an important inquiry in this context is to study the existing meanings of ‘replication’ and ‘reproducibility’, in the hope of articulating a more coherent and useful concept of replication. It should be clear enough, broadly applicable enough, and provide specific enough tools to answer two crucial questions for any scientific endeavor: to what degree are the results accurate and how generalizable are they? The first question asks whether the description of the observed results more accurately fit a description of a causal, a random or some other sequence of events? Further, even if the results are “statistically significant” (i.e. non-random), are they reproducible with repeated measurements? The first question in effect deals with the realism of a scientific description and analysis, i.e. what "actually" happened in a certain place and time, while the second question deals with the generality of that analysis and its predictions: to what degree is a result observed for a given population—whether random or not—representative of other populations? These two questions are not the same, yet both address the challenge of replication, and both are concurrently required yet typically conflict in answering research questions that use local knowledge of heterogenous populations. In this paper I will unfold the various dimensions of this accuracy-generalizability conflict within the concept of replication in the biological sciences, and sketch a possible resolution, since a general solution is currently not in sight.
Ayelet Shavit, Tel-Hai College
Rotman 2018 Annual Conference: Understanding Replication Across the Sciences
October 13, 2018
Visit the Rotman website for more information on applications, events, project descriptions, and openings. rotman.uwo.ca
Follow The Rotman Institute on Twitter: twitter.com/rotmanphilo
Like The Rotman Institute on Facebook: facebook.com/rotmanphilosophy
Subscribe to our channel: youtube.com/user/rotmanphilosophy
