The research reproducibility crisis and economics of science

Zacharias Maniadis and Fabio Tufano

A fundamental element of science is the reproducibility of its findings that protects the accumulation of scientific knowledge from subjectivity and/or bias while allowing its societal application. However, serious concerns have been recently raised that cast doubts on this prescriptive view. The concerns have sparked a reproducibility crisis in several sciences, since many established results appear not to be reproducible. This alleged crisis has attracted increasing attention in several academic circles as well as mass media coverage.

In this forthcoming publication in the Economic Journal, Zacharias Maniadis and Fabio Tufano offer an overview of the current state of play on the crisis of research reproducibility and the consequent twofold opportunity for cross-fertilization between economics and other empirical disciplines.

The authors envisage two possible streams of productive interdisciplinary interactions: firstly, design economics can help the evaluation of incentive and institutional structures for leading researchers to follow practices that enhance research reproducibility. Secondly, meta-research (empirical) methods have the potential to improve the understanding of how reproducible research findings are in economics. Maniadis and Tufano's paper concludes with a cautionary tale by emphasising that we should not be extremely confident that methods can be transferred tout court across disciplines.

Economic Journal, "The Research Reproducibility Crisis and Economics of Science", by Zacharias Maniadis and Fabio Tufano.

View all featured publications