Article : Psychology’s Replication Crisis Is Running Out of Excuses

[Arnie Pye]

Link : https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psychologys-replication-crisis-real/576223/

Subtitle : Another big project has found that only half of studies can be repeated. And this time, the usual explanations fall flat.

Over the past few years, an international team of almost 200 psychologists has been trying to repeat a set of previously published experiments from its field, to see if it can get the same results. Despite its best efforts, the project, called Many Labs 2, has only succeeded in 14 out of 28 cases. Six years ago, that might have been shocking. Now it comes as expected (if still somewhat disturbing) news.

In recent years, it has become painfully clear that psychology is facing a “reproducibility crisis,” in which even famous, long-established phenomena—the stuff of textbooks and TED Talks—might not be real. There’s social priming, where subliminal exposures can influence our behavior. And ego depletion, the idea that we have a limited supply of willpower that can be exhausted. And the facial-feedback hypothesis, which simply says that smiling makes us feel happier.

One by one, researchers have tried to repeat the classic experiments behind these well-known effects—and failed. And whenever psychologists undertake large projects, like Many Labs 2, in which they replicate past experiments en masse, they typically succeed, on average, half of the time.

Continue reading here :

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psychologys-replication-crisis-real/576223/

 

[rvallee]

Hey at least the psychosocial crowd can say that's not a problem with their work since every time it's been replicated it showed the same thing: nothing.

It's definitely replicable. It fails every time. So at least they got that going for them. They just fail in their own special ways.

Now if only claims that are not backed by the actual trial data were also considered a problem.

 

[Forbin]

From the article:

Ironically enough, it seems that one of the most reliable findings in psychology is that only half of psychological studies can be successfully repeated.

 

[obeat]

The authors of PACE will claim to be in the 50% of trials that do replicate successfully. Large numbers confirming previous smaller studies. The big leap for psychology needs to be the LTFU being more important than the original study. Does the benefit of the trial last ? Listened to radio last night and they were very excited about MDMA for alcoholism........ 5 patients studied and results for 2 analysed at 6 months!!!!

 

[Sean]

Ironically enough, it seems that one of the most reliable findings in psychology is that the current version of psychology is crap.

FTFY.

The big leap for psychology needs to be the LTFU being more important than the original study. Does the benefit of the trial last ?

This. If the LTFU is null, then all the findings before that matter not a jot.

 

[alktipping]

long term studies of psychology should actually show that it is a field full of fraudsters who seem to be excellent bullshitters .

 

[TiredSam]

Psychologists “should admit we haven’t been producing results that are as robust as we’d hoped, or as we’d been advertising them to be in the media or to policy makers,” she says. “That might risk undermining our credibility in the short run, but denying this problem in the face of such strong evidence will do more damage in the long run.”