Largest-ever reproducibility test finds half of social science claims don't replicate

2026-04-03T22:00:29+00:00
New Capabilities, Status: developing

Seven-year, 865-researcher project also shows open-science reforms are measurably fixing the problem

For decades, social science findings shaped everything from classroom teaching methods to criminal sentencing guidelines—yet no one had systematically checked whether those findings held up. Now the results are in. A seven-year project involving 865 researchers, nearly 3,900 papers, and 62 journals across 11 disciplines found that only about 55% of published claims successfully replicate, and just 54% of studies are precisely computationally reproducible. The project, called SCORE and funded by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is the largest and most comprehensive assessment of research reliability ever conducted. Within 24 hours of publication on April 2, major research funders began citing the findings to justify tightening data-sharing and pre-registration requirements.

But the findings carry a clear signal of progress alongside the diagnosis. When researchers shared their raw data and code, reproducibility jumped from 54% to 77%. More recent papers replicated at higher rates than older ones, and journals that require data sharing showed dramatically better results. Fields like economics and political science, which adopted transparency mandates earlier, hit 85% computational reproducibility. The message: the reforms that science adopted in response to the replication crisis are working—measurably and at scale. This evidence is now driving policy change at the highest levels of research funding.