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Given the replication crisis, is psychology ready for much of anything? Yes, I admit that this is snarky, but it is also uncomfortably true. There is good evi
by btilly 8y ago
Given the replication crisis, is psychology ready for much of anything?
Yes, I admit that this is snarky, but it is also uncomfortably true. There is good evidence that things said by psychology that also fit common sense are probably true. However things said by psychology research studies have a good chance of being false. And things concluded by individual psychologists upon a chain of research based on those studies should be viewed with significant skepticism.
This will change when psychology can get from their current 50% replication rate (on a good day) to having a significant body of established research that we have good reason to believe is about 90% likely to be replicable. Until then I'd advise against placing too much trust in anything that it says which you can't find independent reason to believe.
- SpikeDad 8y agoYou have hopes that psychology is a robust enough science that it can improve it's replication rate? Not sure there's evidence of this at all.
- btilly 8y agoYes, I have hope that psychology is trying to replicate what they thought were established results. After a few rounds of that we'll have a limited body of knowledge that has been successfully replicated enough that, despite the overall replication rate, we can trust those results. Once that body of reasonably certain psychological observations is established and starts growing, it will be possible to make some statements about psychology with a high degree of confidence. But whether that coalesces into a paradigm about how to understand people that turns it into a recognizable science is another story.
- SpikeDad 8y agoSeems difficult to imagine such positivity with replication considering how much psychological science depends on subjective information from subjects using "evaluation tools". Who knows what it means when I answer the question "How depressed am I" with 5?
- porpoisely 8y agoYou aren't being snarky. There has been lingering questions about the field of psychology and social science in general for a very long time. Paraphrasing Richard Feymann, he called social science a pseudoscience until proven otherwise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo And after all these years since his interview, we are still waiting. This is one of the reasons why some have placed their hopes on neuroscience being the science of the brain and mind.