The Pain of Replication: Emotional Concerns about Fidelity in a Replication Study

Abstract

The replication crisis has led to more focus on methodology in psychological research. Meta-researchers urged for more direct replications, larger sample sizes, and preregistration of research plans. In this paper we point to two other aspects of research: the ontology of the research phenomenon and the emotions that are part of scientific work. We present an ethnographic case study of a replication in psychology and argue that these three aspects—method, ontology, and emotions—are inextricably linked. By analysing the emotional concerns of the replication researchers, we show that they are especially concerned about fidelity in the various relations in and around the replication study: the reliability of a connection, the trustworthiness of partners, the validity of an inference from one statement to another, the truth of a representation, etc. Their emotions worked as affective entanglements between these various fidelity relations. Central to this tangle of fidelity relations is the relation between the replicators and their object of study. During the replication process, the replicators’ view of what the phenomenon actually is fundamentally changed, eventually nearing a performative approach in which the ontology of the psychological phenomenon is understood as a process, enacted in the underlying praxis.