At the Metascience Symposium, Professor Berna Devezer from the University of Idaho shared her ideas about replication, reproducibility, and meta-science. She stressed that meta-science reforms need to consider the context of each scientific field to be effective.
Prof. Devezer explained how she became skeptical of many studies in behavioral sciences and wanted to understand why some research didn’t seem reliable. This led her to explore meta-science from an interdisciplinary perspective. She believes the focus shouldn’t just be on fixing problems but on asking the right questions to understand how science works.
One key point was the importance of context in replication studies. She shared an example from a social psychology replication study, where the team replicated a simple claim but missed the larger, more important context of the original research. This shows that replication should help build on research, not just test isolated claims.
Prof. Devezer also warned that when reforms, like improving replication rates, are applied without understanding each field’s unique needs, they can lead to misleading conclusions.
In conclusion, she called for a more thoughtful and context-aware approach to meta-science, where the true progress in each field is considered, not just the replication numbers.
Author: Assemgul Kozhabek