Repetition and Replication across Epistemic Cultures

Abstract

Fueled by growing concerns about the reproducibility of well-known scientific studies, and exacerbated by a number of high-profile misconduct cases, the sciences seem to be undergoing an epistemological crisis. In response, many involved have doubled down on traditional criteria for objectivity, culminating in the ambition that all science ought to be replicable. Some salient characteristics of this normative discourse are formalization of methods and of reporting, delayed attribution of credit, renewed struggles over the boundaries of science and the explicit devaluation of epistemic variation. More recently, the call for replicability has been extended across all sciences and humanities, positioning replicability as a universal goal. While loud and very dominant, such calls for replicability (or reproducibility) as the decisive criterion for research quality across the sciences and humanities are not without opposition.

In this panel, we seek to discuss how to establish value and quality in the sciences and the humanities and which role(s) should be reserved for reproducibility and replicability on institutional, organizational, and career levels. We seek to discuss how the replication drive interrupts and innovates knowledge making, across diverse epistemic practices. How does replicability, as a universal requirement, influence the situated character of research and the local character of volunteer, participant or patient expertises? Which institutional, organizational, and career narratives are conducive to emergent norms and which are not? Which other conceptualizations of ‘good’ research compete with replicable research? How plural and local are replication (attempts)? What counts as a successful replication and how can it be known?

Chair

• Bart Penders, Maastricht University

Individual Presentations

• Play It Again: Methods of Repetition in the Laboratory and Beyond - Sarah Klein, University of Waterloo

• The Promise of Standardization: Lessons from an Epistemic Crisis in Toxicology - Colleen Lanier-Christensen, Harvard University

• Politics and Facts: Ideas of Reliability in Humanistic Studies - Bernadette Longo, New Jersey Institute of Technology

• Repeat after Me: Accountability and Replicability across Epistemic Cultures - J Britt Holbrook, New Jersey Institute of Technology; Bart Penders, Maastricht University; Sarah de Rijcke, Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)

• Replicability as a Desideratum in the Humanities - Rik Peels, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Session Organizers

• Bart Penders, Maastricht University

• Sarah de Rijcke, Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS)

• J Britt Holbrook, New Jersey Institute of Technology