Qualification: The reliability of replications: a study in computational reproductions

Record: kaal:position:2026-08-08-365 · 2026-08-08

Breznau and coauthors qualify Kaal's classification of the current estimates as interim. In a computational reproduction experiment, 85 independent teams attempted to reproduce numerical results from the same study. Even the transparent group reproduced 95.7 percent of directions and significance classifications, but only 76.9 percent of estimates within 1 percent of the original values. Only 14 teams reproduced every result within that tolerance. The authors therefore show that access to code improves verification but does not remove researcher error or procedural variation. They estimate that more than one independent attempt may be needed for reliable reproduction. The comparison is methodological. The source does not inspect Kaal's E2B campaign, reconcile its amendment authority, or verify its estimates. It supports treating those estimates as interim until the recorded provenance is reconciled and independent reproduction determines whether the numerical results hold.

Affirmed commentary position. This record extends a source-bound scholarly claim but is not a verbatim paper claim.
Holds when
Current debate

The reliability of replications: a study in computational reproductions

Scholarly basis

kaal:claim:7261481-032
Wulf A. Kaal, Computative Economics: A Framework for Economic Analysis under Computational Abundance (2026). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=7261481
Source PDF sha256: 78c42db521624f7398717732a7fa51a6e3157a5adf02a2e09fbab15e0cf920d9

Evidence and mapping

Evidence: complete peer-reviewed version-of-record PDF with DOI-bound Crossref, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, and Europe PMC identity records
Review tier: independent substantive scholarly-growth qualification
Mapping confidence: 0.96
Mapping ambiguous: false

Topics

research-methodsscholarly-growth-coveragescholarly-literaturecomputational-reproducibilityindependent-verificationevidence-provenance

Provenance

Affirmed in kaal-review:2026-08-13:scholarly-growth-7261481-032-reviewed-v1 on 2026-08-08. Review record.

Verify

Canonical markdown sha256: 1596095c68b0ea61b81fc6575128e3ecc50449c549322c4a92420bd7925f6433
curl -s https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/2026-08-08-365.md | sha256sum