What FiveThirtyEight Can Teach Us about Solving the Replication Crisis. Issue 5 (30th December 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Holman, Bennett
• Is Part Of: Philosophy of science. Volume 89:Issue 5(2022)
• Page Start: 970
• Page End: 979
• Publication Date: 2022-12-30
• Subjects: Science -- Periodicals; Science -- Philosophy; Science; Science -- Philosophy; Philosophie des sciences; Epistemology; Periodicals; 501
• DOI: 10.1017/psa.2022.50
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1539-767X

Abstract

Abstract: Numerous philosophers of science have argued that the incentive structure of science is a major contributor to the replication crisis. In this article I review FiveThirtyEight's election forecasting model and show that it confronts similar problems in political polling and successfully mitigates them, not by changing the incentives, but by weighting a pollster's effect on the model by their past reliability. I argue that a similar weighting procedure holds a promising approach to addressing the replication crisis in science.