Maxwell Scott E, Lau Michael Y, Howard George S
Department of Psychology.
Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University.
Am Psychol. 2015 Sep;70(6):487-98. doi: 10.1037/a0039400.
Psychology has recently been viewed as facing a replication crisis because efforts to replicate past study findings frequently do not show the same result. Often, the first study showed a statistically significant result but the replication does not. Questions then arise about whether the first study results were false positives, and whether the replication study correctly indicates that there is truly no effect after all. This article suggests these so-called failures to replicate may not be failures at all, but rather are the result of low statistical power in single replication studies, and the result of failure to appreciate the need for multiple replications in order to have enough power to identify true effects. We provide examples of these power problems and suggest some solutions using Bayesian statistics and meta-analysis. Although the need for multiple replication studies may frustrate those who would prefer quick answers to psychology's alleged crisis, the large sample sizes typically needed to provide firm evidence will almost always require concerted efforts from multiple investigators. As a result, it remains to be seen how many of the recently claimed failures to replicate will be supported or instead may turn out to be artifacts of inadequate sample sizes and single study replications.
心理学最近被认为面临着复制危机，因为复制过去研究结果的努力常常无法得出相同的结果。通常，第一项研究显示出具有统计学意义的结果，但复制研究却没有。于是就出现了这样的问题：第一项研究的结果是否为假阳性，以及复制研究是否正确地表明根本不存在真正的效应。本文认为，这些所谓的复制失败可能根本就不是失败，而是单个复制研究中统计功效较低的结果，以及未能认识到需要进行多次复制才能有足够的功效来识别真正效应的结果。我们提供了这些功效问题的示例，并建议使用贝叶斯统计和元分析的一些解决方案。尽管多次复制研究的必要性可能会让那些希望快速解决心理学所谓危机的人感到沮丧，但提供确凿证据通常所需的大样本量几乎总是需要多个研究者的共同努力。因此，最近声称的许多复制失败是否会得到支持，或者相反是否可能被证明是样本量不足和单一研究复制的人为产物，仍有待观察。
