The hottest Replication Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Science Topics

Social Scientists Are Lazy

Cremieux Recueil • 477 implied HN points • 25 Mar 26
🔬 Science Replication
  1. Researchers often use between-person comparisons that aren’t causally informative even when within-person or sibling designs are possible, so their estimates can be biased by unmeasured confounders.
  2. When you run within-family or within-person analyses, many headline associations (for example, claims that more social media use lowers cognition) disappear, suggesting those original results were artifacts of confounding.
  3. The field routinely skips basic robustness checks and measurement-invariance tests; empowering methodologists, providing better tools, and enforcing stricter editorial standards would greatly improve research reliability.

Prove it

Nepetalactone Newsletter • 1945 implied HN points • 30 Jun 23
🔬 Science Replication
  1. The importance of independent reproduction in scientific research.
  2. Reproduction being more significant than peer review.
  3. Utilizing blockchain for peer-to-peer review to address replication challenges.

Hillsdale and the N=1 Problem

Aaron Renn • 746 implied HN points • 07 Feb 24
🚌 Education Replication
  1. Hillsdale College's unique success story is hard to replicate by other colleges.
  2. Some successful models, like Hillsdale, are challenging to copy due to unique leadership and historical factors.
  3. Creating models like Hillsdale or other successful entities requires singular leaders and specific conditions that are not easily reproduced elsewhere.
Get a weekly roundup of the best Substack posts, by hacker news affinity:

Should We Care About Replication?

Economic Forces • 6 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🔬 Science Replication
  1. Replication matters because it helps catch fraud and honest mistakes, but it doesn't have to be literal — redoing analyses with different data, larger samples, or better measures can serve the same purpose.
  2. A fall in published comments doesn't mean debate stopped; many critiques now happen in peer review and long appendices, and academic hierarchies and publication norms also shape what gets publicly challenged.
  3. Frontier empirical work is noisy and many surprising results won't generalize, so basic price theory and simple models are essential for asking better questions, judging results, and prioritizing what to replicate.

Are experts useless?

Samstack • 1422 implied HN points • 13 Sep 23
🔬 Science Replication
  1. Experts may not be as reliable as we think, with evidence showing they often fare poorly compared to ordinary individuals in making predictions.
  2. There's a growing concern about fraud and publication bias in scientific journals, undermining the credibility of experts' work.
  3. While skepticism towards expertise is warranted, there are strategies for the average person to evaluate research validity and experts can still provide valuable insights.

LK-99 red flags and other miscellany

Dan Elton's Newsletter • 98 implied HN points • 28 Sep 23
🔬 Science Replication
  1. Potential red flags in scientific research include institutional names, graph quality, and suspicious videos or websites.
  2. Impurities like copper sulfide and uneven copper doping can lead to erroneous results in material studies.
  3. The LK-99 incident highlighted the importance of skepticism, replication, and the limitations of prediction markets and theoretical studies.

Science and Its Discontents

Holodoxa • 139 implied HN points • 29 Mar 23
🔬 Science Replication
  1. Current systems for basic scientific research have weaknesses in terms of funding, publication incentives, and impact evaluation. Scientists often spend less time on actual research due to grant application efforts, and research impact is measured ineffectively.
  2. Systemic issues in research science include inefficiencies, triviality, and misaligned incentives, leading to concerns about technological stagnation and economic growth. The replication crisis is a notable problem, affecting various fields due to lack of reproducibility.
  3. Metascience, analyzing and improving scientific methodology, offers hope for enhancing the quality and efficiency of research. It encourages transparency, awareness of limitations, and informed decision-making by scientists, policymakers, and funders, despite facing obstacles in adoption.

Science Fictions links for February 2024

Science Fictions • 285 implied HN points • 29 Feb 24
🔬 Science Replication
  1. AI-generated fake content can slip through scientific gatekeepers, raising concerns for future integrity.
  2. Replication attempts in psychology from the 1950s and 60s are not holding up well.
  3. There are efforts to spot and report errors in scientific papers, contributing to a more accurate scientific landscape.

Science writing update, August 2023 edition

Science Fictions • 229 implied HN points • 09 Aug 23
🔬 Science Replication
  1. LK-99, the 'room-temperature superconductor', turned out not to be true despite initial social media hype and extravagant claims.
  2. Transparency in scientific publication processes, like preprints and peer review at eLife, can lead to challenges like circulating false claims.
  3. The approval of new drugs for Alzheimer's disease may not always mean groundbreaking results, highlighting the importance of critically analyzing scientific breakthrough claims.

When Does Science Self-Correct? Lessons from a Replication Crisis in Early 20th Century Chemistry

The Good Science Project • 63 implied HN points • 14 Nov 23
🔬 Science Replication
  1. Science can struggle to correct errors from the scientific record, even with healthy reforms in place.
  2. Non-replicable findings can still hold influence and get cited as much as replicable ones.
  3. Natural sciences can swiftly correct mistakes with practical consequences, while social sciences face challenges in self-correction due to less tangible applications and high acceptance of contradictory findings.

libSQL: Diving Into a Database Engineering Epic

Luminotes • 2 HN points • 23 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Replication
  1. SQLite is widely used and respected in critical industries due to strong engineering ethics and a commitment to reliability and backward compatibility.
  2. Forking a project like SQLite, as seen with libSQL, requires competent developers, a clear purpose, and a focus on maintaining high standards to ensure success.
  3. libSQL offers innovative features like different wire protocols, virtual WAL, user-defined WASM functions, and replication to the edge, showcasing the project's evolution and dedication to excellence.

10 Reasons to Doubt Tim’s Vermeer

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 0 implied HN points • 15 Jun 14
🎨 Art & Illustration Replication
  1. Tim Jenison's device used in 'Tim's Vermeer' is not available for purchase, casting doubt on its accessibility and practicality.
  2. There is a lack of evidence of others successfully replicating Tim Jenison's technique, raising questions about its effectiveness and validity.
  3. Attempting to replicate an image using a contraption like Jenison's mirror on a stick proved to be challenging and not as straightforward as demonstrated in the documentary.

Economists found something surprising and you wont believe what happened next

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 0 implied HN points • 15 Apr 17
🔬 Science Replication
  1. Uncertainty can actually increase cooperation in certain situations.
  2. To address breakdowns in cooperation in scientific studies, integration mechanisms like co-authorship can increase credibility and reliability of results.
  3. In the face of surprising experimental findings, proposing new mechanisms and experiments can lead to advancements in scientific knowledge.