Independent verification of empirical results is the cornerstone of science. In practice however, verifying published findings is difficult and not rewarded. Etienne LeBel has developed the web application Curate Science to facilitate and incentivize independent verification. The application makes it easier to determine the replicability, validity and generalizability of findings, hence accelerating theoretical progress. Curate Science helps researchers gauge the replicability of studies by allowing them to publish replication results and link them to original studies. The site also includes links to open data so scientists can more easily verify the analytic reproducibility and validity of each other’s work. To help gauge the generalizability of published findings, the application will soon allow researchers to create and update meta-analyses in the cloud.
Etienne LeBel has a background in experimental social psychology and is currently a research associate at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He is also highly interested in methods and meta-scientific issues and has made several contributions in highlighting the importance of open data and independent replications for scientific progress. For example, LeBel’s initiative PsychDisclosure.org was instrumental in psychology’s top empirical journal Psychological Science’s decision in 2014 to raise their reporting standards. He is also part of a team of researchers who recently published in Science on scientific replicability; the team conducted replications of 100 scientific studies in leading journals, fewer than half of which produced evidence the original authors had claimed.
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