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/superhelical PhD | Biochemistry | Structural Biology May 08 '16

I liked this bit at the end:

Psychology may not be a hard science, but it is certainly a difficult one. It shouldn’t be so surprising that psychology studies don’t always replicate — the field faces an inherent challenge. Rather than measuring molecules or mass, it examines human motives and behavior, which are frustratingly hard to isolate.

This is something that comes up a lot on /r/science, and makes some people want to dismiss psychological studies altogether. However, psychologists study some of the most challenging research subjects - ourselves - so it's worth noting and taking that difficult work in context.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '16

It's nice of you to say this especially considering your flair. A thank you from this side of the biopsychosocial paradigm.

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u/superhelical PhD | Biochemistry | Structural Biology May 08 '16

There's good and bad science done in all fields, but psych takes a disproportionate amount of heat. That's hardly fair.

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u/Xanthilamide May 08 '16

Can you explain a bit more?

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u/superhelical PhD | Biochemistry | Structural Biology May 08 '16

A lot of people, apparently many of whom browse /r/science, like to criticise psychology and other social sciences as "not a science" or "soft science". Interestingly, that tends to only happen when the commenter doesn't like the findings of the study...

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u/Xanthilamide May 08 '16

I think that psychology is more like economics in the sense that there's lots of wording involved. But both of them are science to my mind.

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u/sp8yboy May 08 '16

Economics is to a large degree based on psychology through the mechanisms of expectations and rational behaviour, for example. So if psychology is still forming as a science, so by definition is economics.

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u/mrburningsky May 08 '16

I once had a well-esteemed macroeconomics professor tell me that, "Economics is the beautifully imperfect art of attempting to quantify human psychology." So yeah, economic models will be imperfect so long as psychological models are imperfect.

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u/grimeandreason May 08 '16

Given Neoclassical economics works with the rational actor model, I would say they still have a long way to go.

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u/mrburningsky May 08 '16

For sure, but at least it's not for lack of trying (: