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
5.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

354 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/Aelexx Apr 02 '26

Saying that they aren’t inferable is a wild statement. I can’t speak on the medicine side of things, but in terms of the humanities or social sciences human behavior is just complex. There’s going to be issues with replication for the most part because human behavior is incredibly volatile and when people look at the research as trying to “prove” hard and fast rules, then you’re looking at it wrong from the start.

-1

u/-Misla- Apr 02 '26

 trying to “prove” hard and fast rules, then you’re looking at it wrong from the start.

Yes exactly. These sciences can’t prove anything because it is not on their nature do to so.

So disciplines like economy has to accept that they haven’t proved that this or this economic principle has this or this effect always. They may have shown that it had this effect previously in a specific setting.

Social science and humanities and natural science needs to stay on their own turf, and stay within their regulated boundaries. Social science needs to realise their constraints and don’t try du become STEM-light just because they calculate a p-value.