Evidence map›Paper›PMID 27217556›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016

Contextual sensitivity in scientific reproducibility.

Jay J Van Bavel, Peter Mende-Siedlecki, William J Brady, Diego A Reinero

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 87 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
87citing papers in PubMed, 5 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

87 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
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  5. Meta-assessment of bias in science.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017
    Pooled it
  6. Recruitment Strategies Bias Sampling and Shape Replicability.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2026
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Review
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  13. Concerns About Replicability Across Two Crises in Social Psychology.International review of social psychology · 2025
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27 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Jay J Van BavelDepartment of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003 jay.vanbavel@nyu.edu.
Peter Mende-SiedleckiDepartment of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003.
William J BradyDepartment of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003.
Diego A ReineroDepartment of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In recent years, scientists have paid increasing attention to reproducibility. For example, the Reproducibility Project, a large-scale replication attempt of 100 studies published in top psychology journals found that only 39% could be unambiguously reproduced. There is a growing consensus among scientists that the lack of reproducibility in psychology and other fields stems from various methodological factors, including low statistical power, researcher's degrees of freedom, and an emphasis on publishing surprising positive results. However, there is a contentious debate about the extent to which failures to reproduce certain results might also reflect contextual differences (often termed "hidden moderators") between the original research and the replication attempt. Although psychologists have found extensive evidence that contextual factors alter behavior, some have argued that context is unlikely to influence the results of direct replications precisely because these studies use the same methods as those used in the original research. To help resolve this debate, we recoded the 100 original studies from the Reproducibility Project on the extent to which the research topic of each study was contextually sensitive. Results suggested that the contextual sensitivity of the research topic was associated with replication success, even after statistically adjusting for several methodological characteristics (e.g., statistical power, effect size). The association between contextual sensitivity and replication success did not differ across psychological subdisciplines. These results suggest that researchers, replicators, and consumers should be mindful of contextual factors that might influence a psychological process. We offer several guidelines for dealing with contextual sensitivity in reproducibility.

Indexed as

PsychologyReproducibility of ResultsHumansPublishingResearchSciencecontextmeta-sciencepsychologyreplicationreproducibility

Identifiers

PMID27217556
PMCPMC4988618

What OpenQuestion holds

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Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.