3 ms·
I mean, if anti-science trump people use this to be skeptical of results in psychology and sociology, how wrong would they be? these fields are genuinely corrup
by anchpop 5y ago
I mean, if anti-science trump people use this to be skeptical of results in psychology and sociology, how wrong would they be? these fields are genuinely corrupt and generate unreliable results. We already know the solution: preregistration and registered reports. That may not actually be enough because there are other issues (e.g. almost all studies that attempt to “control for x” or similar are subtly flawed and should be replaced with proper RCTs), but it would at least be a huge and obvious and inexpensive step in the right direction, and the fact that it hasn’t been implemented yet shows that the field is immature and broadly shouldn’t be trusted.
(compare to medical research, which has embraced prereplication because the FDA is actually serious about safety and efficacy and had the good sense to require it. but the FDA is anchored in the real world - if they get it wrong people may die and it’s on their hands. If psychologists get a result wrong, they may generate a bombastic paper for themselves, do a ted talk, go speak on NPR, then write a popsci book, and generally boost their career. So the incentive is for the FDA to be right and for the psychologist to be wrong, so it’s not surprising that that’s what we see.)