“The era of “big data” has transformed our understanding of the human world, making it possible for researchers to study billions of users at once, while at the same time making it impossible for other researchers to replicate their work. The ever-larger datasets that increasingly define modern quantitative social science are controlled by an ever-shrinking number of researchers that have exclusive access to the digital riches of our modern world. Facebook’s new academic research initiative with Social Science One was supposed to fix all of this, granting researchers across the world access to the private data of Facebook’s two billion users to mine, but the unanswered question is how initiatives like Social Science One will address the replication crisis.”

“…When it comes to the replication process, however, Social Science One has remained nearly entirely silent.”

To read more, click here.