Mary Childs

After the break, we enter the 51st replication game.

The teams are mostly economists with a few groups of psychologists, and they've already chosen the papers they'll focus on.

Using just what they have in the replication package, they will have seven hours to check the code, examine the decisions their paper's authors made, and see if the results reproduce.

And then they'll report on whatever they find, so it'll be out there on the record, whether that's a nothing burger or a bombshell.

Jolene.

Did I talk to you for a sec?

I'm Alexi.

Just set the scene for me.

You know, why people would attend this event to do a full day of, like, manual economic labor for no dollars.

So we asked them.

What are you doing here today?

Brielle starts laughing, seemingly at the premise of the question.

Those are the authors of the paper.

Now, regardless of their specific goals, the actual work of replication is divided into two main phases.

Phase one is the same for every team, pure and simple replication.

They will all check the paper's code, the programmed instructions that take some raw data and put it into a bunch of tables that comprise the foundations for the paper's conclusions.

And one type of mistake that they might find is if the code is really broken.

They might find that when they push the button, the code just doesn't run.

The computer just says error.

So we ask the agriculture team to show us exactly what they are doing.