Growth from uncertainty: Understanding the replication 'crisis' in infant cognition

Psychology is a discipline that has a high number of failed replications, which in the past decade has been characterised as a 'crisis'. This characterisation is premised on the assumption that a high number of failed replications is indicative of untrustworthy research (Nosek 2015). This narrative has been challenged in different ways by philosophers of science. This paper contributes to this work by using Hasok Chang's concept of epistemic iteration (2004) to show how a research programme can advance epistemic goals even when it experiences a high number of failed replications. It illustrates this through analysing an on-going large-scale replication attempt of Victoria Southgate's 2007 work exploring infants' understanding of false beliefs. It concludes that epistemic iteration offers a way of understanding the value of replications - both failed and successful - that contradicts the narrative centred around distrust.