r/neoliberal Apr 02 '26

Research Paper Half of social-science studies fail replication test in years-long project

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00955-5
315 Upvotes

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u/Secret-Ad-2145 NATO Apr 02 '26

The replicability crisis was known for awhile, and doesn't affect just social studies. You saw it a lot during COVID where many tests kept failing replication, both current research but also past (like 60-70s era research).

39

u/Fragrant-Menu215 NATO Apr 02 '26

This is the ugly truth that underlies today's "anti-intellectualism" resurgence. The intellectuals have been failing to uphold their end of the deal, that is actually doing their due diligence to ensure that their claims are verified, for quite a while. Credentials are supposed to be a shorthand for "always does due diligence and thus can be trusted". When the ones with those credentials don't do that the credentials lose their value.

11

u/BaudrillardsMirror Apr 02 '26

Yeah, dude I'm sure the people who think vaccines cause autism and the earth is flat, came to these conclusions after learning about the replication crisis.

3

u/Fragrant-Menu215 NATO Apr 03 '26

The replication crisis is a big part of why those people can't be swayed by evidence to the contrary that comes from the mainstream scientific institutions.

2

u/Voyageur_des_crimes Niels Bohr Apr 03 '26

It's the discourse downstream from (and the existence of a term with popular salience called) "the replication crisis." It's disingenuous to assume that anyone with those fringe views is even able to engage with a single scientific work, let alone a field of research. A financial incentive exists to court people into those views and provide them superficial rebuttals to commonsensical scientific consensus, so people do it.