ArticleRoyal Society open science2021
Estimating the reproducibility of social learning research published between 1955 and 2018.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled 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.
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.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Prevalence and predictors of data and code sharing in the medical and health sciences: systematic review with meta-analysis of individual participant data.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2023Pooled it
- Evaluating the reproducibility and verifiability of nutrition research: a case study of studies assessing the relationship between potatoes and colorectal cancer.Nutrition & diabetes · 2026Review
- EVApeCognition: An 18-Year Dataset of Great Ape Cognition.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Article
- From policy to practice: progress towards data- and code-sharing in ecology and evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Guidance framework to apply best practices in ecological data analysis: lessons learned from building Galaxy-Ecology.GigaScience · 2025Article
- Evaluating the Reproducibility and Verifiability of Nutrition Research: A Case Study of Studies Assessing the Relationship Between Potatoes and Colorectal Cancer.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Bridging theory and data: A computational workflow for cultural evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Expanding the data Ark: an attempt to make the data from highly cited social science papers publicly available.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Computationally reproducing results from meta-analyses in ecology and evolutionary biology using shared code and data.PloS one · 2024Article
- Releasing synthetic data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC): Guidelines and applied examples.Wellcome open research · 2024Article
- No evidence that mandatory open data policies increase error correction.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Estimating the reproducibility of social learning research published between 1955 and 2018.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Analytic reproducibility in articles receiving open data badges at the journalRoyal Society open science · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reproducibility is integral to science, but difficult to achieve. Previous research has quantified low rates of data availability and results reproducibility across the biological and behavioural sciences. Here, we surveyed 560 empirical publications, published between 1955 and 2018 in the social learning literature, a research topic that spans animal behaviour, behavioural ecology, cultural evolution and evolutionary psychology. Data were recoverable online or through direct data requests for 30% of this sample. Data recovery declines exponentially with time since publication, halving every 6 years, and up to every 9 years for human experimental data. When data for a publication can be recovered, we estimate a high probability of subsequent data usability (87%), analytical clarity (97%) and agreement of published results with reproduced findings (96%). This corresponds to an overall rate of recovering data and reproducing results of 23%, largely driven by the unavailability or incompleteness of data. We thus outline clear measures to improve the reproducibility of research on the ecology and evolution of social behaviour.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.