ALAMOSA — A handful of students and professors at Adams State University were part of a four-year study that sought to re-emphasize an important pillar in the scientific method.

Their study conducted replications of 100 published findings from three psychology journals and found fewer than half produced the same findings as the original study.

“Results only have validity if they can be replicated,” said professor Kim Kelso, who also chairs the school’s psychology department. “That’s what we tell students, but we don’t walk the talk.”

The three professors and six students from Adams State were among the 270 co-authors of the study published in the journal “Science.”

Reproducibility means the results recur when the same data are analyzed again or when new data are collected using the same methods.

But that is not always an emphasis for researchers or academic journals.

“The pressure is to discover the next bigger, better thing,” said professor Leslie Alvarez, who also is on the psychology department’s faculty.

The inability to replicate original findings doesn’t indicate they were invalid or falsified but the study may lead to better practices.

“From a teaching and learning perspective, one outcome of the project may be to encourage better methods descriptions to allow more accurate replication,” Kelso said.

The Adams State contingent analyzed two studies for the project.

One of the students doing the work is Megan Tapia, who’s now a graduate student in school psychology at the University of Northern Colorado.

“Now that I am in graduate school, I realize the impact replication has on my practice and profession as a school psychologist,” she said. “In order to better serve kids, it is important to have research that is replicable across a variety of settings.”

mhildner@yahoo.com