>Rat park is unreplicatable Much of social science is unreplicatable, psych especially. Is this because it's wrong, or because of other factors? Take the easie

>Rat park is unreplicatable Much of social science is unreplicatable, psych especially. Is this because it's wrong, or because of other factors? Take the easiest, most commonly replicated, least contentious conclusion one can come to in a drug study, namely [0]: "rats will intravenously self-administer (IVSA) cocaine". As you can see if you read the link, there's all kinds of caveats to this statement! If you're not very scrupulous about everything from catheter diameter to the cleanliness of your lab coat (yes, seriously), even this piece of orthodox obviousness can suddenly become "unreplicatable". >It's a sham It's very difficult to get funding for a large-scale drug study that goes against the underpinnings of the grant, hypothesis and conclusion of almost all the other drug abuse rat-studies of the last forty years. Publish-or-perish culture is no less pervasive in psych, and generally speaking, heterodox opinions don't get a lot of airtime in grant application review, let alone academic journals. How many other institutions have even tried to replicate Rat Park, let alone actually achieved some shadow of its methodology? I think the answer might surprise you. edit: or not, you've looked it up! Great! See?! >I'm sorry I'm sorry, too. [0] http://drugmonkey.scientopia.org/2014/07/08/the-most-replicated-finding-in-drug-abuse-science/ http://drugmonkey.scientopia.org/2014/07/08/the-most-replica...