ABSTRACT
Replication failure is a major problem for the social sciences and especially for economics and psychology and may raise concerns about the trustworthiness of science. Replication may be much more of a concern for the integrity of the social sciences than scientific misconduct. Misconduct in science in the form of fraud in science seems to occur more in the natural sciences and especially in the biomedical sciences. The need for replication and protocols for replication failure surely is part of the more general picture of the responsible conduct of research in economics and other social sciences. Direct replication is the idea that scientific investigations can be repeated by almost anyone of appropriate intelligence and suitable experimental competence. The use of the word replication in the term “conceptual replication” is justified by the belief that the derived results of a new project likely would not hold if an earlier project was invalid and unreplicable.
