Why Scientists Shouldn't Replicate Their Own Work

Last week, I wrote about a social psychology paper which was retracted after the data turned out to be fraudulent. The sole author on that paper, William Hart, blamed an unnamed graduate student for the misconduct. Now, more details have emerged about the case. On Tuesday, psychologist Rolf Zwaan blogged about how he was the one who first discovered a problem with Hart's data, in relation to a different paper. Back in 2015, Zwaan had co-authored a paper reporting a failure to replicate a 2011 study by Hart & Albarracín. During the peer review process, Hart and his colleagues were asked to write a commentary that would appear alongside the paper. Zwaan reports that Hart's team submitted a commentary which presented their own succesful replication of the finding in question. However, Zwaan was suspicious of this convenient "replication" and decided to take a look at the raw data. He noticed ...