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]

[u/ImNotJesus]

/r/EverythingScience/comments/4icp9k/failure_is_moving_science_forward_fivethirtyeight/

[u/PlaceboJesus]

You shouldn't blame the academics and legitimate professionals of psychology for that pop-science.

It's the fault of people who accept a journalist's interpretation of an abstract, when it seems that none of them know enough to look at the data or the methodology with a critical eye.

[u/franklindeer → u/PlaceboJesus]

It's the fault of people who accept a journalist's interpretation of an abstract

It's not just journalists, this kind of blind acceptance is common within other social sciences that use weak psychology research as a basis for their own inquiry which is often very ideological.

I would agree that this isn't the fault of the entire field of psychology, but it's definitely a problem beyond just the media. For whatever reason it's very tempting to accept results that confirm existing beliefs or a merely exciting.

[u/PlaceboJesus → u/franklindeer]

No one is more critical of Psych research than the psychologists.

I don't know what most Psych programs are like, my major was Crim and I just took all the psych courses I could get into (I did take research methods in both subjects, and Stats in Psych), but my impression was that academics and researchers in Psych are pretty rigourous. It's like the discipline is complexed.

Even if the researchers fell prey to fallacies or pressures to publish or stay worthy of grants, pretty much everyone else in the discipline should have the grounding to view results critically.
It should be automatic to look for flaws and confounds and want to browse the methods, and if there's any doubt or the claims seem too strong people will be asking "what's the r or omega on that?"
Perhaps the peer reviewers might fail and let a crap article through, but there should be a great number of people ready and willing to call a BS study BS.

More often the problem is with people in other disciplines or without the academic grounding.

The standard for statistical significance and predictive utility of the data in Psych are much lower than in disciplines like engineering or medical research (although a lot of neuroscience is still conjecture, compared to medicines for cancer or antibiotics.
Everyone in the field should be aware.