Replication crisis in the context of "Evidence-based practice"

Metascience (also known as meta-research) is the use of scientific methodology to study science itself. Metascience seeks to increase the quality of scientific research and enhance its efficiency. It is also known as "research on research" and "the science of science", as it uses research methods to study how research is done and find where improvements can be made. Metascience concerns itself with all fields of research and has been described as "a bird's eye view of science". In the words of John Ioannidis, "Science is the best thing that has happened to human beings ... but we can do it better."

In 1966, an early meta-research paper examined the statistical methods of 295 papers published in ten high-profile medical journals. It found that "in almost 73% of the reports read ... conclusions were drawn when the justification for these conclusions was invalid." Meta-research in the following decades found many methodological flaws, inefficiencies, and poor practices in research across numerous scientific fields. Many scientific studies could not be reproduced, particularly in medicine and the soft sciences. The term "replication crisis" was coined in the early 2010s as part of a growing awareness of the problem.

Evidence-based practice is the idea that occupational practices ought to be based on scientific evidence. The movement towards evidence-based practices attempts to encourage and, in some instances, require professionals and other decision-makers to pay more attention to evidence to inform their decision-making. The goal of evidence-based practice is to eliminate unsound or outdated practices in favor of more-effective ones by shifting the basis for decision making from tradition, intuition, and unsystematic experience to firmly grounded scientific research. The proposal has been controversial, with some arguing that results may not specialize to individuals as well as traditional practices.

Evidence-based practices have been gaining ground since the introduction of evidence-based medicine and have spread to the allied health professions, education, management, law, public policy, architecture, and other fields. In light of studies showing problems in scientific research (such as the replication crisis), there is also a movement to apply evidence-based practices in scientific research itself. Research into the evidence-based practice of science is called metascience.

In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) scholarly views or narratives regarding a historical event, timespan, or phenomenon by introducing contrary evidence or reinterpreting the motivations of the people involved. Revision of the historical record can reflect new discoveries of fact, evidence, and interpretation as they come to light. The process of historical revision is a common, necessary, and usually uncontroversial process which develops and refines the historical record to make it more complete and accurate.

One form of historical revisionism involves denying the moral significance or accuracy of the historical record. This type of historical revisionism is called historical negationism, and is contentious as it often includes denying the veracity of genuine documents, or deliberately manipulating statistical data to reach predetermined conclusions. The destruction or alteration of cultural heritage sites is also considered a form of illegitimate historical revisionism when it serves to deny the cultural or historical claims of ethnic groups. Negationists may use the term "revisionism" to portray their pseudoscholarship as legitimate, especially in the context of genocide denial.

A ganzfeld experiment (from the German words for "entire" and "field") is an assessment used by parapsychologists that they contend can test for extrasensory perception (ESP) or telepathy. In these experiments, a "sender" attempts to mentally transmit an image to a "receiver" who is in a state of sensory deprivation. The receiver is normally asked to choose between a limited number of options for what the transmission was supposed to be and parapsychologists who propose that such telepathy is possible argue that rates of success above the expectation from randomness are evidence for ESP. Consistent, independent replication of ganzfeld experiments has not been achieved, and, in spite of strenuous arguments by parapsychologists to the contrary, there is no validated evidence accepted by the wider scientific community for the existence of any parapsychological phenomena. Ongoing parapsychology research using ganzfeld experiments has been criticized by independent reviewers as having the hallmarks of pseudoscience.