Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Can't replicate your previous experimental work? Publish it.

A morale booster for those cynical about the state of scientific publishing was published this week in PLoS ONE. Psychology researchers from Northwestern University were unable to replicate previous experimental results, and instead of hiding from scrutiny and switching gears, published their inability to replicate in PLoS ONE. While obviously the best thing to do for the field, it may have also been a good idea based upon the positive response. Would such a paper be accepted in a closed-access scientific journal? I wonder if it was submitted to the original journal. In any case this is a breath of fresh air at a time when scientific misconduct seems to be given more attention than the successes of peer-review and scientific integrity.


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