Professor Anne Nurse publishes article on importance of teaching data reproducibility

Anne Nurse, professor of sociology at The College of Wooster, recently published a co-authored article on the importance of teaching data reproducibility, or the ability to replicate a study and produce similar results, in higher education. The article, “Reproducibility May Be the Key Idea Students Need to Balance Trust in Evidence with Healthy Skepticism,” was originally published in The Conversation in June before being picked up by Yahoo! News, Seattlepi.com, and other media outlets.

Nurse wrote the piece with Sarah R. Supp, associate professor of data analytics at Denison University; Joseph Holler, associate professor of geography at Middlebury College; Nicholas J. Horton, Beitzel Professor in Technology and Society at Amherst College; Peter Kedron, associate professor of geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Richard Ball, professor of economics at Haverford College. The group of scholars participated in the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges-funded Reproducibility and Replicability in the Liberal Arts Workshop in July 2024.

“Based on our expertise and the students we encounter, we collectively see a need for higher-education students to learn about reproducibility in their classes, across all majors,” the authors wrote. “It has the potential to benefit students and, ultimately, to enhance the quality of public discourse.”

Reproducibility allows research to be verified by other researchers. The authors explain that reproducible research provides the exact materials and methods that were used to arrive at the reported results. “Teaching reproducibility equips students, and members of the public, with the skills they need to critically analyze claims in published research, in the media and even at dinner parties,” the authors wrote.

Nurse and her co-authors noted that being able to reproduce results is especially important in a time of growing polarization. “In today’s world of misinformation and disinformation, healthy skepticism is essential. At the same time, much scientific work is rigorous and trustworthy,” they wrote. “How do you reach a healthy balance between trust and skepticism? How can researchers increase the transparency of their work to make it possible to evaluate how much confidence the public should have in any particular study? As teachers and scholars, we see these problems in our own classrooms and in our students—and they are mirrored in society. The concept of reproducibility may offer important answers to these questions.”

The Conversation is a nonprofit, independent source of news, analysis, and commentary from academic experts.

Posted in News on June 30, 2025.