I'm not arguing at the philosophical level. My views are fairly mundane on that. I'm talking about the implementation of that philosophy (where I agree with yo

I'm not arguing at the philosophical level. My views are fairly mundane on that. I'm talking about the implementation of that philosophy (where I agree with you) in academia, as a system. When I say "build knowledge", I'm speaking colloquially. For a contrived example, we know traits are inherited by animals via genetics. We're confident enough to treat this as knowledge and design other expirements that take this as an assumption. Are we building this kind of knowledge in social science, currently? Does "more research needed" lead to more research being done, typically in a field? If not, why? Why are we moving on to a new question, when the last one is still unanswered. Take a "willpower is a limited resource" hypothesis (replication issues aside). It does not seem impossible to answer this question. Nothing in science is "knowledge" in an absolute sense, but we can get to some level of confidence. So.. do we want to know the answer to this question? If not, why do the the first expirement? If yes, then what would it take to get to an answer? We can answer that partially in advance. Independant replication will be part of the answer. Sufficient sample size also. If we know in advance that these things won't be done, what is the point? I'm an outsider and I realize I may be throwing unwarranted dirt, so if/where I am, apologies. I think that in some fields we systematically do not do the things necessary to get to useful knowledge, a sufficient accumulation of evidence to treat a result as more than anecdote.