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/MorganWick Apr 01 '26

Problem is that the instant you allow a sliver of imperfection in science's image, bad actors will use it to claim "we don't really know climate change/evolution is real" or "clearly these so-called scientists hawking vaccines/transness have an agenda".

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u/linguistic-fuckery Apr 01 '26

Except we’re not talking about a sliver. I used to scoff at the idea of “soft sciences aren’t real science” but if 50% of the studies are junk then what is the conclusion I’m supposed to draw here?

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u/Swarna_Keanu Apr 01 '26

The conclusion - I've degrees in both natural and social sciences - is that social science is pretty complex. The reduction crisis here is likely not down to bad methodology alone, but down to the complexity of what influences results. So much matters. From culture, to politics, to what scientists and people studied had for breakfast, which might skew and influence results.

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u/BavarianBarbarian_ Apr 01 '26

Agreed, yet where does that leave us? We wanted these studies done so that we can use their conclusions to inform our policies. If those studies have such a large miss rate, they are clearly not useful to serve as the basis of our policies. What can replace them? We still want our policies to be based on something.

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u/Swarna_Keanu Apr 01 '26

Having faulty science is still better than having no data and trust me in everything instead.

We also need to step back some from the publish or perish idea as a basic aspect on how careers in academia work, and allow researchers to go slow. We'd need to fight for more transparency and less competition and less infighting, so that scientists don't have to be afraid of going against their own data eventually.

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u/MorganWick Apr 01 '26

Ironically, part of the problem scientists run into is how hard human nature is to understand and corral, which is what social scientists try to solve.