Replicability and transparency in physical therapy research: Time to wake up
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Background Over the past decade, a replication crisis has been recognized in several scientific disciplines, raising concerns about the validity and reliability of published research and eroding scientific credibility. While this crisis has been widely discussed in other fields, its impact on physical therapy research has received little attention. Objective This study aimed to provide an overview of the current state of physical therapy research practices that could suggest low replicability. Methods We assessed the research practices in all original research articles published in official journals of national physical therapy associations in the USA (Physical Therapy), Canada (Physiotherapy Canada), the UK (Physiotherapy), and Australia (Journal of Physiotherapy) between 2022 and 2024. Results A total of 465 original research articles were identified. Of these, 28% were preregistered, 0% were replication studies or registered reports, and 12% provided open data. Sample size justification was reported in 37% of quantitative studies and 23% of qualitative studies. Despite an average time from submission to publication of 400 days, only 1% of manuscripts were preprinted. Among quantitative studies, 33% stated a hypothesis, while 63% relied on significance testing. Of the reported significant p -values, 39% fell within the fragile range (.01≤ p<.05), substantially exceeding the expected 26% under 80% power and suggesting questionable research practices. Hypotheses were supported in 83% of cases, indicating an unreasonably high rate of positive results. A marked difference in the number of p -values just above and just below the significance threshold suggested publication bias. Conclusion These results suggest shortcomings in the reproducibility, replicability, and transparency of the physical therapy literature. Addressing these issues requires the adoption of best practices, including registered reports, justifying sample sizes, publishing negative results, and sharing data and code. Delays in implementing these practices risk exacerbating bias in the literature and undermining the scientific credibility of physical therapy research. Statement This manuscript is a preprint and is not peer-reviewed. All authors have approved this version of the manuscript. Citation Jabouille F, Farajzadeh A, Guillemot Exertier A, Martine J, Sadek N, Huet Klinger L, Iliut CM, Kapsa V, & Boisgontier MP. Replicability and transparency in physical therapy research: Time to wake up. MedRxiv . 2025.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.701 | 0.864 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.011 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.055 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.028 | 0.047 |
| Open science | 0.009 | 0.015 |
| Research integrity | 0.013 | 0.024 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".