Promoting Replicable Sexual Science: A Methodological Review and Call for Metascience

Concerns have increased within the medical and social science communities about the replicability of scientific findings, and subsequently, assessments of replicability and proposals for how it may be increased have become more common. Sexual scientists, however, with few exceptions, have yet to formally participate in the published discourses about replicability. In this commentary, I begin by highlighting how replicability is important for science in general, and then arguing that sexual science could be uniquely and negatively impacted without more direct involvement in the replicability movement from those within our field. I then briefly review several mechanisms through which replicability can be undermined in research, and some of the proposals for addressing these issues. I conclude by offering some ideas for how sexual scientists might begin to evaluate and improve the replicability of our field, and stress the need for sexual scientists to add their voices to the ongoing discussions about the problem of replicability of scientific findings.