9 ms·

Biology has a replication crisis almost as bad as psychology. I agree with a lot of these criticisms but I wonder why we don't see articles questioning if biolo

Biology has a replication crisis almost as bad as psychology. I agree with a lot of these criticisms but I wonder why we don't see articles questioning if biology is a science. Perhaps there was a period in the past where biology was more rigorous, whereas psych has always been really handwavy? There's not a lot of real predicting in bio research IME (granted only with a couple subfields). A bunch of things are tried and then whatever works is the focus of the publication, with a write up implying there was a clear hypothesis from the start. Of course not all bio labs are like this, but I'd argue not all psych labs are either. A lot of this is bad incentives and poor training, but human research is especially hard to control. So I think the issue is partially inherent to the field (in both psych and to some extent bio).

freshair 5y ago
Biology is huge. It encompasses everything from neuroscience to zoography. Somebody could probably make a good case for psychology being under the umbrella of biology, if they were inclined. I'd guess the replication crisis in biology is not evenly distributed among branches of biology; for instance I guess it's much worse in biomedicine than it is ornithology. And even within one branch of the biology, I expect the replication crisis is not evenly distributed. Studies about the behaviors of birds probably reproduce less than studies about the distribution of birds (particularly since the introduction of photography, which removes a lot of ambiguity from the later but not necessarily the former.)
curiousgal 5y ago
> I wonder why we don't see articles questioning if biology is a science. Simply because we can't question the results of the field: medicine, vaccines, etc. Whereas for psychology, I fail to think of a single tangible result.
choeger 5y ago
Biology got us two (soon three) working mRNA-bases Covid-19 vaccines.

freshair 5y ago

Biology is huge. It encompasses everything from neuroscience to zoography. Somebody could probably make a good case for psychology being under the umbrella of biology, if they were inclined. I'd guess the replication crisis in biology is not evenly distributed among branches of biology; for instance I guess it's much worse in biomedicine than it is ornithology. And even within one branch of the biology, I expect the replication crisis is not evenly distributed. Studies about the behaviors of birds probably reproduce less than studies about the distribution of birds (particularly since the introduction of photography, which removes a lot of ambiguity from the later but not necessarily the former.)

curiousgal 5y ago

> I wonder why we don't see articles questioning if biology is a science. Simply because we can't question the results of the field: medicine, vaccines, etc. Whereas for psychology, I fail to think of a single tangible result.

choeger 5y ago

Biology got us two (soon three) working mRNA-bases Covid-19 vaccines.