Coding errors can be avoided

An article in the American Journal of Political Science was corrected after the coding of a political attitude variable was accidentally the wrong way around. Pre-publication cross-checks by the authors and the journal, as well as publication of the original data and variable transformations can avoid such problems.

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LaCour: Overview over the debate

When a study fails to replicate in political science, retractions are not very common. Often, the re-analysis that questions the original findings is published in the same or another journal; and then the original author sometimes writes a third article defending his/her findings (see here). Recently, a failed replication made it into the news, and suddenly there’s a ‘scandal.’ Here are the most important pieces you should read if you want to know the details.