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. 2023 Feb 22;10(2):221306.
doi: 10.1098/rsos.221306. eCollection 2023 Feb.

Replication of the natural selection of bad science

Florian Kohrt  1 , Paul E Smaldino  2   3 , Richard McElreath  4 , Felix Schönbrodt  1
Affiliations

Replication of the natural selection of bad science

Florian Kohrt et al. R Soc Open Sci. .

Abstract

This study reports an independent replication of the findings presented by Smaldino and McElreath (Smaldino, McElreath 2016 R. Soc. Open Sci. 3, 160384 (doi:10.1098/rsos.160384)). The replication was successful with one exception. We find that selection acting on scientist's propensity for replication frequency caused a brief period of exuberant replication not observed in the original paper due to a coding error. This difference does not, however, change the authors' original conclusions. We call for more replication studies for simulations as unique contributions to scientific quality assurance.

Keywords: agent-based model; cultural evolution; incentives; metascience; replication.

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Conflict of interest statement

We declare we have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Comparison between the results of the original and the replicated model. Panel (a) is recreated from the data for fig. 5 of the original publication. This figure is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7547729 under a CC0 1.0 licence.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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