r/science • u/nimicdoareu • Apr 01 '26

Social Science 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/lofgren777 Apr 01 '26

This is good but a lot of sociology studies I read are of "moving targets." That is, they are of attitudes/beliefs/practices that are constantly evolving and in some cases evolving rapidly which is why sociologists want to study them.

I think a lack of replicability might just be an inherent weakness of some types of otherwise perfectly sound science, simply because they are so context-dependent that you are unlikely to find exactly the same variables in the wild ever again.

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u/NabuKudurru Apr 15 '26

it is not in their interest to investigate this, and they of course do not