The "repeatability" difficulty in the ecological experiment is an important issue. From the point of view of the ontology, mainly due to the natural variability, and partly due to the large scale, it is easy to use an organism system to illustrate the process, or to choose the homogeneity and balancing system to simulate the natural micro universe experiments. However, all these simplifications of the natural selection, or simplified simulations of the nature, although valid for a moment, are not always feasible. From the point of view of the epistemology, the ecology of the complexity of the subjects, the organic wholeness and historic nature make the validity of the understanding restricted, which directly affects the experimental "repeatability". Therefore, it is necessary to accurately determine the experiment site, and to clearly define the relevant concepts, to achieve the correctness(reality) of the ecology experiment and create a "repeatable" win-win situation. Methodologically, the incomplete experimental reports and the lack of relevant method-specific details are important causes of the "repeatability" difficulty of ecological experiments, thus it is necessary to improve the experimental report and the review system, to provide the original records of experimental details, to apply strict evaluation criteria. From the point of view of the axiology, academic misconducts, such as the P-hacking, the cherry-picking, and the hypothesizing after results(HARKing), etc., become important aspects of the experiment's "repeatability" difficulty and must be eradicated completely.
[1] 肖显静. 生态学实验的"自然性"特征分析[J]. 自然辩证法通讯, 2018, 41(3):1-9. Xiao Xianjing. The characteristics of "naturalness" in ecological experiments[J]. Journal of Dialectics of Nature, 2018, 41(3):1-9.
[2] Polis G A, Wise D H, Hurd S D, et al. The interplay between natural history and field experimentation[C]//Resetarits W J, Bernardo J. Experimental Ecology:Issues and Perspectives. Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1998:257-258.
[3] Schnitzerand S A, Carson W P. Would ecology fail the repeatability test[J]. BioScience, 2016, 66(2):98-99.
[4] Ellison A M. Repeatability and transparency in ecological research[J]. Ecology, 2010, 91(9):2536-2539.
[5] Hargrove W W, Pickering J. Pseudoreplication:a sine qua non for regional ecology[J]. Landscape Ecology, 1992, 6(4):251-258.
[6] Schindler D W. Replication versus realism:the need for ecosystem-scale experiments[J]. Ecosystems, 1998(1):323-334.
[7] Likens G E, Bormann F H, Pierce R S, et al. Biogeochemistry of a forested ecosystem[M]. New York:Springer-Verlag, 1977.
[8] Wright S J, Calderon O, Hernandez A, et al. Are lianas increasing in importancein tropical forests:A 17-year record from Panama[J]. Ecology, 2004, 85(2):484-489.
[9] Risser P G, Karr J R, Forman R T T. Landscape ecology:Directions and approaches[M]. Champaign:Illinois Natural History Survey Survey Special Publication No.2, 1984.
[10] Abbott W. Microcosm studies on estuarine waters I:The replicability of microcosms[J]. Water Pollution Control Federation, 1966, 38(2):258-270.
[11] Kraufvelin P. Baltic hard bottommesocosms unplugged:Replicability, repeatability and ecological realismexamined by nonparametric multi-variate techniques[J]. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology & Ecology, 1999, 240(2):229-258.
[12] Shapiro J T, Báldi A. Lost locations and the(ir)repeatability of ecological studies[J]. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2012, 10(5):235-236.
[13] 福特. 生态学研究的科学方法[M]. 肖显静, 林祥磊, 译. 北京:中国环境科学出版社, 2012:438-444. Ford. Scientific method for ecological research[M]. Xiao Xianjing, Lin Xianglei, trans. Beijing:China Environmental Science Press, 2012:438-444.
[14] Anderson D R, Link W A, Johnson D H, et al. Suggestions for presenting the results of data analysis[J]. Journal of Wildlife Management, 2001, 65:373-378.
[15] Fidler F, Burgman M, Cumming G, et al. Impact of criticism of null-hypothesis significance testing on statisticalreporting practices in conservation biology[J]. Conservation Biology, 2006, 20:1539-1544.
[16] Land M, Graneli W, Grimvall A, et al. How effective are created or restored freshwater wetlands for nitrogen and phosphorus removal:A systematic review protocol[J]. Environmentol Evidence, 2013, 2(1):16.
[17] Haddaway N R, Styles D, Pullin A S. Evidence on the environmental impacts of farm land abandonment in high altitude/mountain regions:A systematic map[J]. Environmentol Evidence, 2013, 2:18.
[18] Haddaway N R, Burden A, Evans C D, et al. Evaluating effects of land management on greenhouse gas fluxes and carbon balances in boreo-temperate lowland peatland systems[J]. Enviromental Evicleace, 2014, 3:5.
[19] Söderström B, Hedlund K, Jackson L E, et al. What are the effects of agricultural management on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks[J]. Enviromental Evicleace, 2014, 3:2.
[20] Haddaway N R, Verhoeven Jos T A. Poor methodological detail precludes experimental repeatability an hampers synthesis in ecology[J]. Ecology and Evolution, 2015, 5(19):4451-4454.
[21] Fidler F, Chee Y E, Wintle B C, et al. Metaresearch for evaluating reproducibility in ecology and evolution[J]. BioScience, 2017, 67(3):282-289.
[22] Garssen A G, Verhoeven J T A, Soons M B. Effects of climate-induced increases in summer drought on riparian plant species:a meta-analysis[J]. Freshwater Biology, 2014, 59(5):1052-1063.
[23] Gilbert K J, Andrew R L, Dan G B, et al. Recommendations for utilizing and reporting population genetic analyses:The reproducibility of genetic clustering using the program structure[J]. Molecular Ecology, 2012, 21(20):4925-4930.
[24] Koricheva J, Gurevitch J, Mengersen K. Handbook of metaanalysisin ecology and evolution[M]. Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2013.
[25] Simmons J P, Nelson L D, Simonsohn U. A 21 word solution[EB/OL]. (2016-11-11). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2160588.
[26] Hillebrand H, Gurevitch J. Reporting standards in experimental studies[J]. Ecology Letters, 2013, 16(12):1419-1420.
[27] Schnitzer S A, Carson W P. Would ecology fail the repeatability test[J]. BioScience, 2016, 66(2):99.
[28] Simmons J P, Nelson L D, Simonsohn U. False-positive psychology:undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant[J]. Psychological Science, 2011, 22:1359-1366.
[29] John L K, Loewenstein G, Prelec D. Measuring the prevalenceof questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling[J]. Psychological Science, 2012, 23:524-532.
[30] Baker M. Is there a reproducibility crisis[J]. Nature, 2016, 533(7604):452-454.