2024 AALAC Workshop on Reproducibility and Replicability in the Liberal Arts

Group Photo of Participants Workshop participants

Outcomes

Description

President Biden declared 2023 the Year of Open Science for “restoring trust in government through scientific integrity and evidence-based policymaking”. The National Academies (NASEM 2019) and National Science Foundation have called for increased funding for research and pedagogy on reproducibility and replicability (R&R) to address the replication crisis. These fast-moving developments have fundamental implications for teaching and research at liberal arts colleges.

We define reproduction of a prior study as using the same methodology with the same data to obtain the same results. Reproducibility, closely tied to open science, offers opportunities to check the internal validity of prior studies. We define replication of a prior study as using the same methodology with new data. Replicability builds upon reproducibility to externally validate prior studies and test their generalizability. The replication crisis highlights the failure of validation and self-correction in science due to inadequate scientific communication, bias, and fraud.

We propose a workshop to advance open science and R&R in the liberal arts. We are scholars at the forefront of developing innovative pedagogy to train the next generation of open scientists in our respective disciplines. Teaching R&R is complementary to a liberal arts education: it challenges students to develop their writing, communication skills, and data/code literacy, and to critically apply ethics and sociology of science. Students can also learn cutting edge science by replicating published studies, as Middlebury students have done with geographic COVID-19 research.

Resources