Research can be improved by carrying out more replication studies, according to a new study by Lund University School of Economics and Management, reports Tim Banerjee Dhoul
Burak Tunca, senior lecturer in marketing at Lund University School of Economics and Management has made a series of recommendations on the LUSEM website regarding the concept of replication when it comes to research.
“Many people take peer review as a guarantee of good research, but peer reviewers mainly convey theoretical arguments and rarely demand to examine the data behind the study. This surprised me even when I was a doctoral student: who is checking whether my calculations are wrong? The answer turned out to be no one”, Tunca said. “We researchers know that a number of studies do not replicate, but the public seldom hears about that as a ‘failed’ study is not deemed to be newsworthy”, he added.
Tunca and his co-authors tried – and were unable – to replicate the findings of two published consumption studies that received widespread media attention. One showed that women who owned clothes and bags by luxury brands send a signal that their partners are devoted to them (covered, for example, in The Atlantic under the headline, ‘Women and Luxury Products: How a New Study Brings Up Old Anxieties’ in 2013). The other showed that people feel that consumption of ‘super-sized’ portions – of hamburgers or coffee, for example – signals high status (covered in Scientific American under the headline, ‘The Perils of Paying for Status’ in 2012.
“We did not succeed in replicating them and producing the same strong connections,’ said Tunca. This doesn’t mean that the original studies are incorrect – we simply say that more research is needed. That is all”, the LUSEM Lecturer explained.
The other recommendations to improve research given are: pre-registering hypotheses and methods; showing data; improving the peer-review system; and letting bachelor’s and master’s students get involved in replication studies. ‘Scientific research is the best thing we have to drive our society forward, but we need to become better to be sure that such research is reliable. Openness in research… is an available marketing niche that could give Lund University, or any other university, a competitive advantage,’ Tunca concluded.
This article is adapted from one which originally appeared in the September issue of Ambition – the magazine of the Association of MBAs.
