2 ms·

How many are not caught? Particularly in non-scientific-method subjects like psychology? Or data heavy non repeatables like sociology?

• apl 14y ago
  > Particularly in non-scientific-method subjects like > psychology? That's a strong statement, especially when you include the more biology-leaning subfields like cognitive psychology. The methodology of modern psychology is fairly sound.
• hga 14y ago
  The general theory on this is that if the results are important and something people can build on, when other labs try the latter they discover something's wrong. Things get messy where the results are viewed as important but they don't naturally lead to more dependent experiments, at least not any time soon. Look at the epidemiological research on dietary fat over the last 40+ years for a sobering lesson in how badly things can go wrong. Of course another factor is politics, internal and external to science. If your results show a study or worse sub-field is wrong, well, I don't have to tell you what happens. Except that your results might get accepted when the existing gatekeepers die off. ADDED: in the relatively hard sciences, there are few fields more "politicized" than the "biomedical and life sciences". The work is difficult, math is generally not a forte of the researchers, the greater stakes are high (e.g. "a cure for cancer"), etc. Still, science seems to do this better than most other fields.