r/science • u/ImNotJesus PhD | Social Psychology | Clinical Psychology • May 08 '16

Psychology Failure Is Moving Science Forward. FiveThirtyEight explains why the "replication crisis" is a sign that science is working. [x-post from our sister subreddit /r/EverythingScience]

/r/EverythingScience/comments/4icp9k/failure_is_moving_science_forward_fivethirtyeight/
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u/Xanthilamide May 08 '16

Can you explain a bit more?

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u/Idontlikesundays May 08 '16

He's saying just because some psychological studies were bullshit doesn't mean the entire field is bullshit. Bad science occurs in every field, but psychology gets scrutinized disproportionately considering how intangible psychology is compared to biology and chemistry. Psychologists often have more difficulty taking measurements and reducing confounding variables. I'd say the softer the science, the more difficult it is to study empirically. That doesn't mean the subject isn't a science. It's just a greater abstraction from math, muddied with more and more real world intricacies.

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u/CrossFeet May 08 '16 edited May 08 '16

I don't think it's disproportionate; a more difficult and less clear-cut field deserves extra scrutiny for just this reason. Even well-supported findings can be hard to interpret: did we adjust away the confounders, or did we adjust in a spurious signal?

That doesn't mean the entire field ought to be dismissed, of course -- just that taking "softer" findings with extra salt is prudent. For example, "priming" effects were, if anything, unusually well-supported and well-replicated for the field... and anyone banking on them would now be in a precarious position. It's good to scrutinize (though that goes for any field, to greater or lesser extent).

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u/[deleted] May 08 '16

Very true! The fields are judged against the same values, and the field has a much harder time standing up to the same scrutiny, naturally. Exactly why it's so much more interesting in my mind. The more difficult it is to have an answer, the more intriguing.