Overcoming Objections to Open-Source Social Science

Commentators appreciate the benefits of developing improved standards for replicating quantitative results in sociology. Nonetheless, reservations remain, and the author addresses several of them and explains why improved replication standards do not endanger participant confidentiality, do not undermine incentives for collecting data, do not need to wait for greater standardization of data formats, need not require that editors assign a reviewer to actually replicate results, and do not diminish methodological diversity in any positive sense. The author concludes by encouraging sociologists to find a way of moving beyond intermittent discussions of replication standards to collective action.