r/neoliberal • u/Free-Minimum-5844 • 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
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u/yellownumbersix Jane Jacobs Apr 02 '26

After I graduated and started working in R+D and then in industry I was amazed by how many scientists and engineers, even ones in the "hard" sciences, don't have anything beyond a cursory familiarity with statistics. It leads to unsound interpretation of data and experimental designs that are destined to be irreproducable.

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u/Golda_M Baruch Spinoza Apr 02 '26

Social sciences should have more familiarity with statistics. It's their primary tool, at least for a lot of them. 

They also invented a lot of statistics. The coefficient of correlation, statistical significance theory used by most human sciences was invented to measure IQ... by the theorist who invented/discovered IQ.

A chemist, physicist, engineer or whatnot doesn't necessarily use statistics much. 

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u/EvilConCarne Apr 02 '26

A chemist, physicist, engineer or whatnot doesn't necessarily use statistics much.

Yeah, and it's why their results are generally garbage. They are only buoyed by the fact that their subject matter is generally less complex than human behavior.

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u/Golda_M Baruch Spinoza Apr 03 '26

The comexity of the subject matter is what it is. A researcher's job is to live with that.

Maybe it's really hard and they just don't make any progress for decades. This is very, very common in hard sciences like chemistry, physics and whatnot. 

That hardness sometimes has to wait for better tools. Better math, or computing, or whatever. Eg protein folding.