This Is the Reason for External Replication: Response to Aungle et al.

“…subject to researcher degrees of freedom so that the appearance of a statistically significant ( z = 1.96, p = .05) result could easily have arisen just by chance (as discussed in general terms by Simmons et al., 2011) or by alternative causal pathways having nothing to do with mind–body healing.”

“Such a course of action is hardly discouraged by the current academic publishing system, which overwhelmingly favors the production of novel results over the careful refinement of existing claims (Nosek et al., 2012).”

“In their reply, Aungle et al. (2026) cited an article by Zahrt and Crum (2017)—which was not one of the 28 articles cited by Aungle and Langer—that relied on secondary observational data with considerable analytic flexibility (e.g., in the selection of covariates from among the dozens of variables…”

“The claims of Aungle and Langer (2023) and those in many of the articles that they cited are, as the saying goes, “big if true” (Gelman, 2022).”

“In our 2024 article, we focused on a single study and then traced back some of its references to address the interesting puzzle of how this seemingly strong published literature could exist alongside a lack of accepted theory and a steady stream of criticism (Gelman & Brown, 2024).”

“The claims of Aungle and Langer (2023) and those in many of the articles that they cited are, as the saying goes, “big if true” (Gelman, 2022).”

“In the same section of their reply, Aungle et al. (2026) wrote, “We question the basis of Gelman and Brown’s claim that the findings of Crum and Langer (2007) are unreplicable. . . .”