Psychologists Strike a Blow For Reproducibility

ananyo writes "Science has a much publicized reproducibility problem. Many experiments seem to be failing a key test of science — that they can be independently verified by another lab. But now 36 research groups have struck a blow for reproducibility, by successfully reproducing the results of 10 out of 13 past experiments in psychology. Even so, the Many Labs Replication Project found that the outcome of one experiment was only weakly supported and they could not replicate two of the experiments at all."

Comments

Psychology

[Anonymous Coward]

If only Psychology was a science.

Re:Psychology

[__aaltlg1547]

If the experiments are reproducible, it's science.

Apparently it's biochemistry that is not a science.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203764804577059841672541590

Re:Psychology

[FatdogHaiku]

If only Psychology was a science.

Lol -- psychiatrists and psychologist doing experiments. It's is a weak science at its best; a modern day priesthood at its worst.

For your heresy and disbelief you have been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic!
We will monitor you to see if medication will be adequate to silence you, I mean, control your symptoms...

Re:Psychology

[Lamps]

The ironic thing about statements like these is that they usually come from people with no scientific training in any field, nor any meaningful training in statistics, but only a "sciency" inclination and questionable, popular distillation-derived knowledge of some principles from what they consider "the hard sciences".

Sadly, this irony will be lost on the people making such statements, who will, for some unfathomable reason, continue to disparage people doing meaningful work in the sciences, while never coming close to accomplishing anything of the sort themselves.

Actual academics have an idea of the hard work involved in contributing to the human knowledge base in all scientific disciplines, and thus, tend to respect each other's work (as long as others don't step on their own toes in their particular area of specialization, in which case, prepare for turbulence).

Re:Psychology

[Michael Woodhams]

Psychology is a huge field. Perception, experimental analysis of animal behaviour, clinical psychology, cognitive biases etc. etc. (Note that only one of those involves psychiatrists.) Some bits allow for harder science than other bits.

I personally don't know enough about psychiatry to form a judgement on how scientific they are, but unlike you, at least I know what a psychologist is (or something of the range that they could be.) Your trite dismissal says much about your ignorance and nothing about psychology.

Re:Psychology

[rtb61]

Psychology ran in a major hiccup, as many of it's experiments are no longer reproducible not because of bad 'science' but because they are considered naughty and not something that should really be done to people to test out psychological theories, as in http://www.bps.org.uk/what-we-do/ethics-standards/ethics-standards (I used British standards rather than US ones, as the US ones have so badly been mauled by the US government and their fully medically and psychological researched mass torture facility at GITMO that the US ones are rules that 'should be' broken as defined by the US government) and http://mentalfloss.com/article/52787/10-famous-psychological-experiments-could-never-happen-today.

Re:Not bad at all

[bondsbw]

If the scientific community valued reproducibility as much as original work, we would solve 2 problems:

1) Science without confirmation can lead us astray for years.
2) There are plenty of scientists who a great at experimentation but lousy at coming up with new ideas, and these scientists (or potential scientists) may not be finding their full potential.

And while we're at it, let's value failed experiments as much as successful experiments.