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These are top social scientists and, unfortunately, their field is a total dumpster fire at the moment. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0399-z ht

These are top social scientists and, unfortunately, their field is a total dumpster fire at the moment. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0399-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0399-z

auganov 5y ago
If you're implying the replication crisis is limited to social sciences, that's too narrow. You'd expect to see these problems in any field that primarily relies on hard to gather data that is far removed from the underlying phenomenon. Many sciences that aren't strictly "soft" have "soft" fields. Say, Biology->drug research. Also not to argue semantics but when you hear the word "scientist" in common parlance it almost exclusively refers to people doing that kind of research. The "sciences" that don't have these problems tend to not be too big on using the word "science".
- myWindoonn 5y ago
  Cosmology is the first field which comes to mind; it fits your criteria, but is far harder (as a science) than psychology and far more reliable. Psychologists can't define "mind" and change their entire profession every few decades, but "sun" has not changed much as a phenomenon for a long time. The reason why the social sciences (social psychology, criminology, economics, advertising/marketing) are hit hardest by the replication crisis is because they were not actually sciences! They are ways for our society to police its members' behavior (relationships, crime, money, attention) and they pretend to be science in order to gain prestige. There's also, finally, the matter of scale and relevance. When a chemist reports that a rare chemical reaction doesn't perform in the lab as expected, then this is a failed replication; however, chemistry labs regularly replicate entire textbooks' worth of material for entire classes of undergraduates. Meanwhile, some of the most important claims in psychology, like priming, are failing to replicate.

auganov 5y ago

If you're implying the replication crisis is limited to social sciences, that's too narrow. You'd expect to see these problems in any field that primarily relies on hard to gather data that is far removed from the underlying phenomenon. Many sciences that aren't strictly "soft" have "soft" fields. Say, Biology->drug research. Also not to argue semantics but when you hear the word "scientist" in common parlance it almost exclusively refers to people doing that kind of research. The "sciences" that don't have these problems tend to not be too big on using the word "science".

myWindoonn 5y ago
Cosmology is the first field which comes to mind; it fits your criteria, but is far harder (as a science) than psychology and far more reliable. Psychologists can't define "mind" and change their entire profession every few decades, but "sun" has not changed much as a phenomenon for a long time. The reason why the social sciences (social psychology, criminology, economics, advertising/marketing) are hit hardest by the replication crisis is because they were not actually sciences! They are ways for our society to police its members' behavior (relationships, crime, money, attention) and they pretend to be science in order to gain prestige. There's also, finally, the matter of scale and relevance. When a chemist reports that a rare chemical reaction doesn't perform in the lab as expected, then this is a failed replication; however, chemistry labs regularly replicate entire textbooks' worth of material for entire classes of undergraduates. Meanwhile, some of the most important claims in psychology, like priming, are failing to replicate.