Policy and Scientific Implications of Compromised Replications

ABSTRACT

Replications and the sharing of data with other researchers have become an essential part of the scientific process, and it is an aspect of the social sciences that has grown exponentially over the last few decades and is now required for most federally funded studies. Unfortunately, there are few guidelines or narratives for unexpected complications between replicators and those providing the data sets. The current article is a case study regarding a replication of a study of 270 criminally-justice involved individuals with substance use disorders, who were randomized either to self-help recovery homes, professionally led therapeutic communities or a control condition. The replicators and the original investigators arrived at different conclusions regarding critical post-incarceration outcomes. These types of discrepancies can have critical policy implications particularly as there are so few randomized studies examining post-incarceration outcomes for those released from jails and prisons. The contrasting conclusions were, in part, due to differences in a variety of conceptual and methodological issues. To avoid these types of difficulties, we propose several types of recommendations designed to enhance the scientific process for replication studies and secondary use data sets.

KEYWORDS:

• Replications
• recovery homes
• Oxford Houses
• criminal justice
• days incarcerated
• cost-benefit analyses

Acknowledgments

We appreciate the useful comments and edits of Kyle Hucke and Nathan Doogan. Data sets for analyses described in this article are available at Mendeley Data repository: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/3pr3cpx6cg/3

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.