(Amal Deena A21F)PT 1 : Is replicability necessary in the production of knowledge?
Understanding PT
Production of knowledge
What kind of knowledge are we going to focus on? Does different areas of knowledge determines the necessity of replicability?
Replicability
Replication is a term referring to the repetition of a research study, generally with different situations and different subjects, to determine if the basic findings of the original study can be applied to other participants and circumstances
If a study can be replicated, it does not guarantee that the original results of the study were correct
If it can't be replicated, it doesn't mean that the original claims were false
Does this mean that replicability also plays a role in expanding knowledge?
Limits of replicability- If people stayed stuck in determining the validity of knowledge through replicability, then knowledge wouldn't have expanded as much as it has now
Could the necessity of replicability also limits the knowledge that can be acquired? What are those limits?
Can the exact same conditions be replicated? If replication isn't possible then is the knowledge not justified?
Acquiring knowledge through ways of knowing (WOK)
Necessary
So, does every area of knowledge needs replicability to determine its validity?
Link Title
Is it possible for every knowledge to be replicated?
When knowledge is sought, it needs to be proven that it is true. Replicability is one of the ways to show that a knowledge is valid
How do we determine if replicability is necessary?
Areas of Knowledge
History
Human Sciences
Human Sciences : In 2012, a group of researchers conducted 100 studies from three respected psychology journals that showed only 36 per cent of studies could be reproduced.
Replication can increase certainty when findings are reproduced and promote innovation when they are not. Therefore, replicability serves as verification of what we think we know. It does not mean that the knowledge is not true. NOT NECESSARY
NECESSARY-if all conditions are met, but not same, could be there is a mistake
But, it means that there could be a mistake. This is dangerous because “Today, we’re mutually dependent other groups' research, because we cite each other and build upon each other’s work. In this way, a single mistake can multiply and create a cascade of bad research, that is very hard to detect and takes long time to correct,” Associate Professor David Budtz Pedersen from the Department of Communication, Aalborg University, Denmark. says.
“A lack of reproducibility may also indicate that we don’t understand parts of the experiment well enough yet and so it’s difficult to reproduce all of the relevant parts, because we don’t know what they are, and then we change a couple of parameters that we thought didn’t matter.” says Associate Professor Mikkel Johansen from the Department of Science Education at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. This means lack of replicability of an experiment could also because of the lack of information from the original author of the original conditions of the experiment.
Mathematics : The process of understanding the study is in a way replicating the study because the paper is the work itself, unlike experiments in human or natural sciences. Applicable for most mathemathical theories
But, as mathematics become more advanced, it becomes harder to understand, even by experts. Therefore, it is hard to verify the study
Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki have claimed to find the proof of the abc conjecture, a complex mathematical problem that baffled everyone. For a long time, mathematicians believe that the conjecture was true, but nobody had ever been able to prove it. In 2012, in a series of four papers totaling about 500 pages posted to his website, Mochizuki proposed his new inter-universal Teichmüller theory, a new kind of mathematics. Other mathematicians have spent the years since trying to decipher it. Scores of conferences and papers hundreds of pages long have been devoted to figuring out what the unprecedented theory actually meant, and still no one was really able to get to the bottom of it.
NNECESSARY : no one can understand the knowledge
Consultation
- Different arguments in different AOK
- Cannot generalize method of replication without justification (Maths- understanding and replicating)
- One AOK has claim and counter claim (4 examples at least)
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What does replicability help with in the production of knowledge?
= It helps with increasing validity of the knowledge produced
Natural Science : replicability is to recreate the experiment in different situations (other countries) or different subjects(female etc) and gain the same results
Mathematics : The process of understanding the study is in a way replicating the study because the paper is the work itself, unlike experiments in human or natural sciences.
Important to prove the likeliness of a research being true.
Andrew Wakefield published The Lancet. The Lancet promoted a non-existent connection between autism and the MMR vaccine, used against measles, mumps and rubella. This turbocharged the anti-vaccine movement, which resulted in falling rates of immunization globally and resurgence in diseases
Later, it was revealed that the study is fraught with ethical, financial and methodological impropriety.
If the study is replicated, maybe it could be found that the study is largely unreliable, and make sure the public is not affected by misinformation.
Research is built up from other researches. A faultful research can lead to more false researches as scientific facts build from one another.
Effects of a decreased likeliness of a true research
Yes, but the necessity isn't as high as
What is replicability?
-It is a study being repeated
-objective : to increase the validity of that knowledge
-What is the problem?-Now, largely overlooked because scientists chase new, exciting discoveries, rather than fact-checking old ones.
In the production of knowledge
-It is necessary-why is that?
-What is the circumstance that makes it not necessary?
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What makes replicability necessary?
Replicability increases the validity of knowledge
-If there is no replicability, there is a HIGH chance that the fact is false
What makes replicability not necessary?
EFFECTS
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