Check Me, Replicate Me

We all make mistakes. Sometimes, this happens unnoticed. And sometimes, it doesn’t even matter. But there are some areas where it’s particularly troublesome when we make mistakes. And science, I think, is one such area. Luckily for us, science (and philosophy, I might add) is a collaborative enterprise. And uncovering mistakes is an integral part of it. In this spirit, I invite you to check and replicate my work. To help you with this, I try to maintain repositories containing essential files (i.e., primarily data and analysis files) for research projects where I am first or corresponding author.

Check My Work

Inspired by Gilad Feldman,¹ I offer to pay you a bounty for every minor or major error you find in my preprinted and published work. Definitions and rules are taken from the websites of Gilad Feldman and Stuart Ritchie.

• I understand a minor error to be, for example, the incorrect reporting of a numerical result. On the other hand, typos or grammatical errors do not count unless they significantly change the meaning of what is being said. If you find a minor error in my work, I offer to pay you USD 5.
• I understand a major error to be, for example, a flaw in my method, an error in my code that significantly changes the results, or an erroneously drawn conclusion that is not supported by the data. If you find a major error in my work, I offer to pay you USD 50.

As both Gilad Feldman and Stuart Ritchie note, they “have to be objective errors – not matters of opinion or interpretation.” All errors found in my preprinted and published work will be collected in a separate section of this website.

Replicate My Work

Should you be interested in replicating my work, there are a few things I do to make this as easy as possible for you:

• For projects where I am the first or corresponding author, I try to maintain repositories containing all the essential files.
• If anything is missing in a repository, please feel free to contact me, and I will try to add the missing files if possible.
• If you are working on replicating my work, I will be happy to give you feedback and answer any questions you have.

1. Gilad Feldman got the idea from Stuart Ritchie, who himself adapted it from Ruben Arslan, José Luis Ricón, and the Knuth Reward Check. ↩