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why not turn the premise from the article around. Instead of suggesting that math might also have a replication crisis, why not question whether the whole repli

why not turn the premise from the article around. Instead of suggesting that math might also have a replication crisis, why not question whether the whole replication crisis thing was overblown and effectively more of an ideological attack on a few disciplines. Errors in science, disagreement and lack of reproducibility I think are common and prevalent but it doesn't necessarily imply that a discipline as a whole doesn't make progress. The obsession with statistical accuracy and 'science as bookkeeping' mentality seems fairly new to begin with, and science did just fine before we even had the means to verify every single thing ever published. It kind if ignores the dynamic nature of science. Most of what is published probably has close to zero impact regardless of whether its right or wrong, but paradigm changing research generally asserts itself. Science is evolutionary in that sense, it's full of mistakes but stumbles towards correct solutions at uneven tempo. In a sense you can just look at it like VC investment. Nine times out of ten individual things don't work, but the sector overall works, the market economy is full of grifters and failed businesses, but it doesn't matter that much. So, maybe half of math is bullshit but so is everything else but in math people just say "whatever" until they find something good, whereas in psychology people use it as an opportunity to hack away at it.

burnished 5y ago
This isn't turning the problem around in the same sense. In order to effectively turn a problem around you need to use its complement, and then it should be a binary proposition. Your example where you suppose an idealogical attack fails here because it is not the only other explanation, you haven't turned the problem around in the same way that turning "what is the probability this action had an effect" around can become "what is the probability that this action had no effect".
quanticle 5y ago
It kind if ignores the dynamic nature of science. Most of what is published probably has close to zero impact regardless of whether its right or wrong, but paradigm changing research generally asserts itself. The problem is that psychology, unlike physics, doesn't really have a paradigm. There's the old saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." But for that heuristic to be effective, you need a standard for what counts as extraordinary. Extraordinary compared to what? In phsyics, there are two well-established paradigms (relativity and quantum mechanics), which establish what counts as ordinary, and what counts as extraordinary. So, for example, if you're making a claim that the distribution of dark matter in the cosmos more clumpy than predicted by existing models, of that the energy level of a particular field is 12 MeV rather than 10, those are ordinary claims, which can be accomodated by tweaks to the existing paradigm. But if you're saying that the speed of light has varied over the history of the universe, or that all subatomic particles are actually tiny vibrating string-like structures, well, that's going to require a lot more evidence. In psychology, it's much more difficult to have that kind of intuition. Take the concept of priming, for example. Is claiming that people walk more slowly when they're encouraged to think of things that make them feel old extraordinary? It makes a certain sort of intuitive sense, but, on the other hand, there's absolutely no causal mechanism suggested. So when a number of priming studies fail spectacularly under replication [1], I don't know what to think. I don't have a good sense for how much of psychology is overturned by the replication failure, in the same sense that I'd have for physics if it turned out that e.g. the speed of light is a variable rather than a constant. [1]: https://mindhacks.com/2017/02/16/how-replicable-are-the-social-priming-studies-in-thinking-fast-and-slow/ https://mindhacks.com/2017/02/16/how-replicable-are-the-soci...
- pdonis 5y ago
  > In phsyics, there are two well-established paradigms (relativity and quantum mechanics), which establish what counts as ordinary, and what counts as extraordinary. Actually, I would say that these well-established paradigms establish what counts as extraordinary. In other words, relativity and QM are examples of extraordinary claims that we believe because we have extraordinary evidence for them. Both of these theories say all kinds of extraordinary things, and most people who first encounter the theories start out thinking they can't possibly be true. We believe them not because they are just ordinary, but because we have taken the time and effort to accumulate extraordinary evidence for them. In that light, the replication crisis in other areas of science is easily explained: they allow extraordinary claims to be published without the extraordinary evidence that those claims would require. So of course many of those claims turn out to be wrong.
- 988747 5y ago
  Psychology currently is just a pseudoscience, really. It is at the same stage the general medicine was before microscope was invented and bacteria discovered: they try to analyze some phenomenon, but they have not discovered the underlying principle yet. My bet is: the real advancement in treating mental disorders will come from AI/neural network researchers, not psychologists.
AussieWog93 5y ago
The difference between the two examples you have it that venture capital and the market economy openly embrace their flaws, whereas science and academia refuses to acknowledge (or manage) the "humanness" of the system and projects a hyper-enlightened ideal both internally and to the outside world.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

burnished 5y ago

This isn't turning the problem around in the same sense. In order to effectively turn a problem around you need to use its complement, and then it should be a binary proposition. Your example where you suppose an idealogical attack fails here because it is not the only other explanation, you haven't turned the problem around in the same way that turning "what is the probability this action had an effect" around can become "what is the probability that this action had no effect".

quanticle 5y ago

It kind if ignores the dynamic nature of science. Most of what is published probably has close to zero impact regardless of whether its right or wrong, but paradigm changing research generally asserts itself. The problem is that psychology, unlike physics, doesn't really have a paradigm. There's the old saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." But for that heuristic to be effective, you need a standard for what counts as extraordinary. Extraordinary compared to what? In phsyics, there are two well-established paradigms (relativity and quantum mechanics), which establish what counts as ordinary, and what counts as extraordinary. So, for example, if you're making a claim that the distribution of dark matter in the cosmos more clumpy than predicted by existing models, of that the energy level of a particular field is 12 MeV rather than 10, those are ordinary claims, which can be accomodated by tweaks to the existing paradigm. But if you're saying that the speed of light has varied over the history of the universe, or that all subatomic particles are actually tiny vibrating string-like structures, well, that's going to require a lot more evidence. In psychology, it's much more difficult to have that kind of intuition. Take the concept of priming, for example. Is claiming that people walk more slowly when they're encouraged to think of things that make them feel old extraordinary? It makes a certain sort of intuitive sense, but, on the other hand, there's absolutely no causal mechanism suggested. So when a number of priming studies fail spectacularly under replication [1], I don't know what to think. I don't have a good sense for how much of psychology is overturned by the replication failure, in the same sense that I'd have for physics if it turned out that e.g. the speed of light is a variable rather than a constant. [1]: https://mindhacks.com/2017/02/16/how-replicable-are-the-social-priming-studies-in-thinking-fast-and-slow/ https://mindhacks.com/2017/02/16/how-replicable-are-the-soci...

pdonis 5y ago
> In phsyics, there are two well-established paradigms (relativity and quantum mechanics), which establish what counts as ordinary, and what counts as extraordinary. Actually, I would say that these well-established paradigms establish what counts as extraordinary. In other words, relativity and QM are examples of extraordinary claims that we believe because we have extraordinary evidence for them. Both of these theories say all kinds of extraordinary things, and most people who first encounter the theories start out thinking they can't possibly be true. We believe them not because they are just ordinary, but because we have taken the time and effort to accumulate extraordinary evidence for them. In that light, the replication crisis in other areas of science is easily explained: they allow extraordinary claims to be published without the extraordinary evidence that those claims would require. So of course many of those claims turn out to be wrong.
988747 5y ago
Psychology currently is just a pseudoscience, really. It is at the same stage the general medicine was before microscope was invented and bacteria discovered: they try to analyze some phenomenon, but they have not discovered the underlying principle yet. My bet is: the real advancement in treating mental disorders will come from AI/neural network researchers, not psychologists.

AussieWog93 5y ago

The difference between the two examples you have it that venture capital and the market economy openly embrace their flaws, whereas science and academia refuses to acknowledge (or manage) the "humanness" of the system and projects a hyper-enlightened ideal both internally and to the outside world.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]