Making Scientific Inferences More Objective: Replication and Scientific Self-Correction
Making Scientific Inferences More Objective: Replication and Scientific Self-Correction
Monday, February 20, 2017: 9:00 AM-10:30 AM
Room 310 (Hynes Convention Center)
The label "objective" marks science as unbiased and grounds the authority of science in society. The objectivity of science depends on its self-corrective character. However, this self-corrective character faces several problems in practice. Replication is essential to scientific self-correction, but many findings in the behavioral sciences and biomedical research do not replicate. To increase replicability, this talk suggests that scientific communities need to adopt “self-corrective labor schemes” in which replication labor is systematic, independent, and sustainable. Based on these three criteria, we can evaluate extant self-corrective scheme proposals. Finally, we defend a scheme that rewards replication labor as a service and outside science’s novelty-based reward system. This scheme satisfies the criteria better than the extant proposals. The talk concludes discussing policy challenges for the implementation of self-corrective labor schemes.