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I deal with this problem in the social sciences, where the problem is even worse. Data analysis by convention with an overwhelming reliance on expensive propietary software ... I'm actually talking to a bunch of academics on this topic later this week, so this article is very timely.


I work in the social sciences, and I have to say: no one cares about reproducibility or replication.

I write all my papers in LaTeX and R, using Sweave to ensure that my code matches my analysis. Typically, when I send PDF's or tex files to anyone else, they ask me for word files. No one ever cares about the code (even though I send it every time).

In fact, I (and other colleagues) have been asked to replicate our analyses done in R in SPSS as (apparently) R is open source, so it can't possibly be right. The sad part is that i started using R because many of the most useful psychometric models are not available in SPSS (and probably never will be).

To the second point, no one cares about replications. They aren't sexy enough, so they don't get published. If you find something strange, you'll get published in a good journal. The ten failed replications won't be published anywhere nearly as good, so scientists don't bother to replicate.




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