Title: When a study can’t be replicated | Science News for Students
Headings: When a study can’t be replicated
Science & Society
When a study can’t be replicated
Many factors can prevent scientists from repeating research and confirming results
By Janet Raloff
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Explainer: Global warming and the greenhouse effect
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Content: Similarly, some studies involve conditions that are quite complicated. Examples can include the weather or how crowds of people behave. Consider climate studies. Computers are not yet big enough and fast enough to account for everything that affects climate, scientists note. Many of these factors will vary broadly over time and distance. So climate scientists choose to analyze the conditions that seem the most important. They may concentrate on those for which they have the best or the most data. If the next group of researchers uses a different set of data, their findings may not match the earlier ones. Eventually, time and more data may show why the findings of an original study and a repeated one differ. One of the studies may be found weak or somewhat flawed.