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Sneaking suspicion that this will readily extend to other soft sciences, particularly sociology. A good chunk of our social and educational policy is informed

Sneaking suspicion that this will readily extend to other soft sciences, particularly sociology. A good chunk of our social and educational policy is informed by psychology and sociology. Since we have all grown up within various systems and institutions that have been largely informed by bad research, it's unlikely much will happen, since we see the claims made by these charlatans to be normal or common sense. Nonetheless, it will be amusing watching the charlatans try to defend themselves in the coming years.

unprepare 11y ago
This seems to me to be a clear cut case of poor incentives in the academic research sector. No graduate student is incentivized to re perform existing experiments to verify them, no they find much more success in creating a unique experiment which tests a previously untested hypothesis. This is modern academic science. If you aren't doing something newsworthy, you're not getting any funding.
- EdiX 11y ago
  >No graduate student is incentivized to re perform existing experiments to verify them If you look at how this thing with psychology started ("replication bullies") or at what Brockman said about the LaCour scandal earlier this year (he didn't pursue publication initially because he thought he'd risk his career), it's not that they aren't incentivized, it's that they are actively discouraged.
- Asbostos 11y ago
  Not only is lack of replication bad, but I think also excess of new research is bad too. Everybody makes their own unique study, too different to compare to existing research, too small a sample size to be reliable, too singular among thousands of equally unimportant and unreliable studies that it goes unnoticed and unused. Really, those researchers trying to do something novel but being incompetent at it, should put their skills to use replicating something else instead. Sure this would lead to them being seen as 2nd class scientists. But we still need that service, just as we still need cleaners even though they're seen as 2nd class workers. Universities are the ones providing the incentives. Their management should be stopping and thinking about if their policies are adding value to scientific knowledge or subtracting it.
omginternets 11y ago
>particularly sociology I'll take it a step further. The reason we're hearing about psychology and not sociology is that few people take sociology seriously, as a science. Sociology is a science like political science is a science in that any irrefutable claim constitutes a valid theory. Evidence is secondary and the notion of falsifiability doesn't even come up. Psychology has a very hard-science core, whose reputation is so tarnished by its "social" counterpart that no self-respecting researcher wants to be called a psychologist anymore. Replace your searches for psychology with cognitive science and you'll find a lot of good, reproducible, research such as this: http://cavlab.net/?lang=en http://cavlab.net/?lang=en

unprepare 11y ago

This seems to me to be a clear cut case of poor incentives in the academic research sector. No graduate student is incentivized to re perform existing experiments to verify them, no they find much more success in creating a unique experiment which tests a previously untested hypothesis. This is modern academic science. If you aren't doing something newsworthy, you're not getting any funding.

EdiX 11y ago
>No graduate student is incentivized to re perform existing experiments to verify them If you look at how this thing with psychology started ("replication bullies") or at what Brockman said about the LaCour scandal earlier this year (he didn't pursue publication initially because he thought he'd risk his career), it's not that they aren't incentivized, it's that they are actively discouraged.
Asbostos 11y ago
Not only is lack of replication bad, but I think also excess of new research is bad too. Everybody makes their own unique study, too different to compare to existing research, too small a sample size to be reliable, too singular among thousands of equally unimportant and unreliable studies that it goes unnoticed and unused. Really, those researchers trying to do something novel but being incompetent at it, should put their skills to use replicating something else instead. Sure this would lead to them being seen as 2nd class scientists. But we still need that service, just as we still need cleaners even though they're seen as 2nd class workers. Universities are the ones providing the incentives. Their management should be stopping and thinking about if their policies are adding value to scientific knowledge or subtracting it.

omginternets 11y ago

>particularly sociology I'll take it a step further. The reason we're hearing about psychology and not sociology is that few people take sociology seriously, as a science. Sociology is a science like political science is a science in that any irrefutable claim constitutes a valid theory. Evidence is secondary and the notion of falsifiability doesn't even come up. Psychology has a very hard-science core, whose reputation is so tarnished by its "social" counterpart that no self-respecting researcher wants to be called a psychologist anymore. Replace your searches for psychology with cognitive science and you'll find a lot of good, reproducible, research such as this: http://cavlab.net/?lang=en http://cavlab.net/?lang=en