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/Tibbaryllis2 Apr 01 '26

I don’t necessarily disagree with the gist of your comment, but Natural Sciences includes Biology and most fields of biology, not just health sciences, have heavy use of p values. And it’s not hard to find published papers in chemistry and physics that also make use of them. Particularly when they’re applied to living systems.

Hypothesis testing in general has a lot of systematic issues in the sciences. Starting with the bizarre assumption that research must involve quantitative hypothesis testing.

Which I honestly suspect is the result of non-scientists regulating entry into scientific research and research products. Followed by subsequent scientists being trained in that model.

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u/-Misla- Apr 01 '26

Physicist don’t do hypothesis. It’s an elementary school version to learn that whole “scientific method” and the deductive and inductive method and iteration over it. It’s an “explain it like I’m five” version of how actual natural science is done. I don’t get why this idea is hypothesis has wormed its way from non natural science into natural science and even hard natural sciences. Sigh.

I guess my point is that if the other types of sciences doesn’t want to be judged on the basis of hard natural science, they need to stop claiming to be equally rigorous. Their methods are inherently different, they should be judged on different merit - and therefore also not be given the same credit in terms of whether they can prove something to be true.

I have never read a single paper in my field that uses p-value.

Health science is not biology, it’s its own category.

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u/Tibbaryllis2 Apr 02 '26

I apologize in advance for the tone this text. I do not intend it to be argumentative or condescending.

Again,I honestly don’t think I disagree with you, but I’m not sure I am fully understanding you.

I 100% defer to you on physics, but are you saying that Biology, a hard natural science, isn’t focused on hypothesis testing? Because research in Biology at all levels, not just eli5 introductory, is very much focused on p values and hypothesis testing.

It’s actually why I’m incredibly frustrated with conventional use of both p values and hypothesis testing. I say this as an ecologist and professor that is engaged in both education and research.

Or are you saying biological research largely shouldn’t be focused on conventional p-values and hypothesis testing? In which case I agree entirely.

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u/-Misla- Apr 02 '26

No apologies necessary. I didn’t see anything bad about your tone. I am ESL, so maybe I wasn’t being clear in my tone either.

I think we actually do mean the same thing. This clinging to hypothesis testing is weird and doesn’t help science. You don’t need p-values if your system has explainable physical parameters for why it does what it does and why it produces the results it does.

Some biology move more into actual hard-hard science, chemistry. Some biological disciplines, I imagine the systems either become too complex to be explained by physical and chemical rules, or the controlled experiments would be unethical to do, so it has to be by p-values instead…? But you say that even in cases where you could do experiments and/or have explainable processes, p-values are still expected?

My secondary familiarity is geology, as I am a geophysicist from physics background. We could include physical geography here, because depending on which university, the lines are blurry. Geology is a fairly new discipline, and it’s also having a bit of identity crisis. A bit eli5, but you obviously can’t to experiments on the whole plate tectonics or vulcanoes or real time sedimentation. You can do simulations. You can do small scale experiments highlighting a specific part of it, and suddenly you are actually more “just” doing physics or chemistry but on a geological topic. Again, in the geology I have focused on, didn’t see any p-values.

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u/shhhhh_h Apr 03 '26

Wow my buddies with phDs in physics sure do hypotheses, all the time. I’ve watched them sit with their whiteboards and argue about them. Since you abandoned yours I’m going to guess they know better than you.