Field: Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and UncertaintyType: No effect foundArea: meta-science (replication)Target: Replicator expertise (h-index) as an explanation for failed replicationsStage: full study
Hypothesis
Replications fail because the replicating researchers lack the expertise and diligence to recreate the original conditions, so replicators with higher h-indices should succeed more often.
What failed
Across 100 scientists who attempted to replicate five studies, replication success and investigators' h-indices both varied widely, but there was no relationship between them.
Broken assumption
Failed replications reflect the replicators' lack of skill rather than problems with the original findings.
Why
The abstract does not offer an alternative explanation; it concludes only that low replicator expertise does not account for the failures.
From the published paper: Protzko et al. PeerJ, 2020. ↗CC BY