The Value of Replication Research Posted on April 14, 2008 Replication studies provide early researchers with valuable experience, states David Elkind (bio).

They’re training young people for research, and unlike many other disciplines, we don’t do replication research. And I did that in my training, and I thought it was invaluable to. I replicated the Piaget experiments and that working with children, repeating those things.

Sometimes I think young investigators feel that they have to do something absolutely new, whereas sometimes replicating other experiments that have already been done, but with little twists and so on gives them the experience. And I think that the pressure to do something that’s absolutely new for somebody who’s new in the field is — and you don’t do it in physics, you don’t do it in chemistry, but it is replication.

So I think that’s one of the things I’d like to encourage people to do is to do replication, and sometimes their faculty advisors are down on that and so on. But I would say it’s a very valuable experience and one that you don’t have to do all of the design of everything yourself the first time, but you get the experience of running and doing that.

Sometimes students get a thrill in working with a faculty member and so on, and sometimes they’re encouraged to do something on their own. And if you’re just doing something with your own faculty member, following his own research, but if you’re doing something on your own, I think it’s so important to do some kind of replication.

« Back to Article