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> Yes, psychology is absolutely full of bad science and bad scientists. Lots of fields are, but particularly psychology. Social sciences in general are probabl
by BeefWellington 5y ago
> Yes, psychology is absolutely full of bad science and bad scientists. Lots of fields are, but particularly psychology.
Social sciences in general are probably harder than other fields for the simple reason that it requires other people's time and effort.
A psychologist friend of mine once dropped the line "we know a lot about how university students view the world" when discussing the replication crisis. I think that while simplifying things quite a bit, it is very apt.
Edited for coffee
- tgv 5y agoIf the latter were true, I'd be surprised. It's obviously a quip about using students as subjects for credits, but the average psychology study reveals very little about students. After all, it's how they got convinced psi exists (Bem, 2011).
- mywittyname 5y agoEconomics is where you really glean insights into university students. For example, they enjoy free food exponentially more than they like very cheap food. Also, they great at playing games for money.
- colechristensen 5y agoIt's more than that, people who aren't really interested in science or the math required to do good science are attracted to the "social sciences" in a much higher degree. People who are unqualified to do analyses are publishing papers and those papers are getting published with the approval of their peers who are similarly likely to be unqualified.
- colechristensen 5y agoA related concept which is just a bit broader is WEIRD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic dominate the participants in psychology studies, even when they're not just psychology undergrads encouraged to participate in research.