I blogged about the original research report, First results from psychology's largest reproducibility test in Problems with Science May 2015. Here are some rebuttal links and a rebuttal to the rebuttal. It seems the issue of reproducibility is still unsettled.
Pacific Standard magazine, Mar 3, 2016.
A high-profile paper left that impression last year.
Now, Harvard University researchers are offering a detailed rebuttal.
...
A group of researchers led by prominent Harvard University psychologist
Daniel Gilbert has published a detailed rebuttal of the 2015 paper.
It points to three statistical errors that, in their analysis,
led the original authors to an unwarranted conclusion.
In their rebuttal to the rebuttal, Nosek and his colleagues agree that
"both methodological differences between original and replication studies
and statistical power affect reproducibility," but add that the Gilbert
team's "very optimistic assessment is based on statistical misconceptions
and selective interpretation of correlational data."
...
"More generally," Nosek and his colleagues add, "there is no such thing
as exact replication." As they see it, their paper "provides initial,
not definitive, evidence--just like the original studies it replicated."
Slate blog, Mar 3 2016.
Yeah, I know, 39 percent sounds really low--but it's about what
social scientists should expect, given the fact that errors could
occur either in the original studies or the replicas, says King.
...
Some of the methods used for the reproduced studies were utterly
confounding--for instance, OSC researchers tried to reproduce an
American study that dealt with Stanford University students'
attitudes toward affirmative action policies by using Dutch students
at the University of Amsterdam. Others simply didn't use enough
subjects to be reliable.
The original article in Science from Open Science Collaboration.
Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available. Replication effects were half the magnitude of original effects, representing a substantial decline. Ninety-seven percent of original studies had statistically significant results. Thirty-six percent of replications had statistically significant results; 47% of original effect sizes were in the 95% confidence interval of the replication effect size; 39% of effects were subjectively rated to have replicated the original result; and if no bias in original results is assumed, combining original and replication results left 68% with statistically significant effects. Correlational tests suggest that replication success was better predicted by the strength of original evidence than by characteristics of the original and replication teams.
The original rebuttal in Science.
A paper from the Open Science Collaboration ( Research Articles, 28 August 2015, aac4716) attempting to replicate 100 published studies suggests that the reproducibility of psychological science is surprisingly low. We show that this article contains three statistical errors and provides no support for such a conclusion. Indeed, the data are consistent with the opposite conclusion, namely, that the reproducibility of psychological science is quite high.
The rebuttal to the rebuttal in Science.
Gilbert et al. conclude that evidence from the Open Science Collaboration's Reproducibility Project: Psychology indicates high reproducibility, given the study methodology. Their very optimistic assessment is limited by statistical misconceptions and by causal inferences from selectively interpreted, correlational data. Using the Reproducibility Project: Psychology data, both optimistic and pessimistic conclusions about reproducibility are possible, and neither are yet warranted.