Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Nautilus

    Why We Shouldn’t Accept Unrepeated Science—Our Author Responds to His Critics

    by Ahmed Alkhateeb Aug 17, 2016 4 minutes

    Last month a long thread evolved on Hacker News, a popular discussion forum, in response to my Nautilus article, “We Should Not Accept Scientific Results That Have Not Been Repeated.” Much to my delight, it generated a rich conversation involving scientists and non-scientists alike. That’s fitting, since our inability to independently replicate our results, I argue, threatens to undermine trust in the scientific enterprise—something every citizen has a stake in.

    Before I respond to the arguments against my position from the Hacker News community, allow me to quickly summarize my view. I think the irreproducibility crisis we are currently witnessing needs to be seen in a particular light.

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Nautilus

    Nautilus7 min read
    The Feminist Botanist
    Lydia Becker sat down at her desk in the British village of Altham, a view of fields unfurling outside of her window. Surrounded by her notes and papers, the 36-year-old carefully wrote a short letter to the most eminent and controversial scientist o
    Nautilus13 min read
    The Shark Whisperer
    In the 1970s, when a young filmmaker named Steven Spielberg was researching a new movie based on a novel about sharks, he returned to his alma mater, California State University Long Beach. The lab at Cal State Long Beach was one of the first places
    Nautilus9 min read
    The Invasive Species
    Several features of animal bodies have evolved and disappeared, then re-evolved over the history of the planet. Eyes, for example, both simple like people’s and compound like various arthropods’, have come and gone and come again. But species have no

    Related Books & Audiobooks