Replication after Collins: An ethnography of current replication studies in psychology
Jonna Brenninkmeijer et al.
What the paper says
Ethnography and other empirical studies of replication played a significant role in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) during the 1970s and 1980s. Collins and other proponents of SSK highlighted that exact replication was impossible, knowledge was often tacit and hard to explicate, and that results were always socially negotiated. We revisit these observations and compare them with our ethnography of current replication practices in psychology. We highlight the diversity of negotiations, tacit knowledge, and practices surrounding replication more generally. We also examine how replication encourages and necessitates reflection on the research process-on what should count as the same experiment and the same result, on the role of tacit knowledge (such as skill, experience, judgment, and feeling) in science, and on what replication entails and whether it is worth the effort. Researchers who conduct replications can be seen as ethnographers of their science, reflecting on the scientific process and the challenges of producing results.
1 citation
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06 |
| M · momentum | 0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.