Robust research needs many lines of evidence

Munafò, Marcus R.; Smith, George Davey

doi:10.1038/d41586-018-01023-3

Cited by 522 publications

(394 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Addressing the effects of precipitation variability on ANPP across space, under current, and future climate conditions requires a series of complementary studies (Cottingham, Fey, Fritschie, & Trout-Haney, 2017;Munafò & Davey Smith, 2018). Data synthesis provides a long-term perspective and broad breadth of the global distribution of the precipitation response in geographical and parameter space but the correlative nature of these studies limits elucidation of cause-effect relationships.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of interannual precipitation variability on dryland productivity: A global synthesis

Gherardi

Sala

2018

Global Change Biology

144

134

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Climate‐change assessments project increasing precipitation variability through increased frequency of extreme events. However, the effects of interannual precipitation variance per se on ecosystem functioning have been largely understudied. Here, we report on the effects of interannual precipitation variability on the primary production of global drylands, which include deserts, steppes, shrublands, grasslands, and prairies and cover about 40% of the terrestrial earth surface. We used a global database that has 43 datasets, which are uniformly distributed in parameter space and each has at least 10 years of data. We found (a) that at the global scale, precipitation variability has a negative effect on aboveground net primary production. (b) Expected increases in interannual precipitation variability for the year 2,100 may result in a decrease of up to 12% of the global terrestrial carbon sink. (c) The effect of precipitation interannual variability on dryland productivity changes from positive to negative along a precipitation gradient. Arid sites with mean precipitation under 300 mm/year responded positively to increases in precipitation variability, whereas sites with mean precipitation over 300 mm/year responded negatively. We propose three complementary mechanisms to explain this result: (a) concave‐up and concave‐down precipitation–production relationships in arid vs. humid systems, (b) shift in the distribution of water in the soil profile, and (c) altered frequency of positive and negative legacies. Our results demonstrated that enhanced precipitation variability will have direct impacts on global drylands that can potentially affect the future terrestrial carbon sink.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of interannual precipitation variability on dryland productivity: A global synthesis

Gherardi

Sala

2018

Global Change Biology

144

134

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“…These examples suggest that especially conceptual replications can be and have been performed in the humanities, typically with a view to make the conclusions more credible by 'triangulation', that is, verifying a conclusion by mutually independent lines of evidence using different methods (Munafò and Smith, 2018). They also suggest that replication may look rather different from one humanistic discipline to another: in the one case, one will compare the contents of various (additional) bodies of text, whereas in another case, one will study the chemical composition, colors, and themes of a particular material object.…”

Section: Replication Is Possiblementioning

confidence: 99%

The possibility and desirability of replication in the humanities

Peels

Bouter

2018

Palgrave Commun

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In this article, we argue that the debate on the poor reproducibility of scientific research has overlooked an entire field: replication is also possible and desirable in the humanities. So far, the debate on replicability has been carried out primarily in the biomedical, natural and social sciences. It turns out that, for a wide variety of reasons, many of which lead to selective reporting, a large proportion of studies in these fields are not replicable, sometimes as many as 70 percent. In this paper, we leave these fields mostly aside, since they have been extensively addressed in the recent literature, and turn to the humanities. First, we distinguish between replicability and replication. Subsequently, we defend the view that replication is entirely possible in the humanities: it meets all the criteria that have been identified for biomedical, natural and social science research. The uniqueness of many research objects in the humanities does not present an obstacle to this. We also explain why replication is desirable and urgently needed in the humanities. Finally, we give various practical guidelines for how replication in the humanities could be carried out, such as focusing on the replication of cornerstone studies or a random selection of published research in a sub-discipline, and opting, if possible, for a conceptual replication, so that triangulation becomes possible.

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“…Evidence could be strengthened further by 'triangulation'-combining different research methods to come to robust conclusions [10,11]. Longitudinal data analysis is one way to infer causality, but it has its limitations.…”

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confidence: 99%