James Turitto: Are we facing a reproducibility crisis, and what can we do about it?

Many in the social and health sciences claim their fields are facing reproducibility crises, in which researchers have failed to replicate many of the major experimental findings in their fields, and that much of the problem is due to bad research. What practices and incentives are driving the problem and how bad is it? What practical steps can we take to improve research practice, transparency, and reproducibility? 

Based at MIT, J-PAL is a network of economists who have run over 800 randomized controlled trials in over 80 countries to ensure that policy is informed by scientific evidence. James Turitto, head of J-PAL’s Research Transparency and Reproducibility Initiative, tackles these questions and shares how trial registries, pre-publication replications, and data publication can help address these challenges in social science.

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