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Robustness Checks
“A conclusion that vanishes under one reasonable choice deserves less confidence than one that survives several.”
01 / SUMMARY
In short
Robustness checks examine whether a result changes across defensible specifications, exclusions, or coding choices. They reveal which decisions carry the conclusion but cannot replace sound design.
03 / SCENE
In the wild
An effect appears only after excluding a group at an arbitrary threshold and fades under other plausible cutoffs.
04 / LIMIT
The limit
Trying many variants and publishing only the favorable one is selective search, not robustness.
FINAL NOTE
What remains
Inspect the full set of reasonable choices and the reason for each one.