Psychology's Replication Battle

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Slate: Psychologists are up in arms over, of all things, the editorial process that led to the recent publication of a special issue of the journal Social Psychology. This may seem like a classic case of ivory tower navel gazing, but its impact extends far beyond academia. ... Those who oppose funding for behavioral science make a fundamental mistake: They assume that valuable science is limited to the "hard sciences." Social science can be just as valuable, but it's difficult to demonstrate that an experiment is valuable when you can't even demonstrate that it's replicable. ...Given the stakes involved and its centrality to the scientific method, it may seem perplexing that replication is the exception rather than the rule. The reasons why are varied, but most come down to the perverse incentives driving research. Scientific journals typically view "positive" findings that announce a novel relationship or support a theoretical claim as more interesting than "negative" findings that say that things are unrelated or that a theory is not supported. The more surprising the positive finding, the better, even though surprising findings are statistically less likely to be accurate."

Comments

Easy to measure versus important

[Tablizer]

Psychologists are up in arms

Perhaps they need some therapy :-)

a fundamental mistake: They assume that valuable science is limited to the "hard sciences."

Software engineering has a similar problem. Things that are objective to measure, such as code volume (lines of code) are often only part of the picture. The psychology of developers (perception, etc.), especially during maintenance, plays a big role, but is difficult and expensive to objectively measure.

Thus, arguments break out about whether to focus on parsimony or on "grokkability". Some will also argue that if your developers can't read parsimony-friendly code, they should be fired and replaced with those who can. This gets into tricky staffing issues as sometimes a developer is valued for their people skills or domain (industry) knowledge even if they are not so adept at "clever" code.

Thus, the "my code style can beat up your style" fights involve both easy-to-measure "solid" metrics and very difficult-to-measure factors about staffing, side knowledge, people skills, corporate politics, economics, etc.

WTF?

[Oidhche]

it's difficult to demonstrate that an experiment is valuable when you can't even demonstrate that it's replicable

Duh. That's because an experiment that is not replicable has *no* value.

Re:WTF?

[ultranova]

You have to specifically DO something to test your claim and NOT do other things for control for it to be an experiment.

But in that case the word "experiment" has been defined so narrowly it's no longer the sole validator of scientific theory. For example, General Relativity predicted that light would be affected by Sun's gravitational field, which was later observed during a solar eclipse, which is a naturally occurring event.

Not Just Psychology

[jamesl]

The reasons why are varied, but most come down to the perverse incentives driving research. Scientific journals typically view "positive" findings that announce a novel relationship or support a theoretical claim as more interesting than "negative" findings ...

This applies to all science, not just psychology.

Re:Freud's problem too

[Anonymous Coward]

When psychologists stop producing so many studies with obvious bias, subjective terminology, subjective conclusions, and stop arbitrarily coming to conclusions based on data flawed for those reasons, maybe it could be taken seriously. Obviously, replication is needed, too.

But so many people are fooled by it. Want a study that says video games cause people to be aggressive? There's a psychology study for you, but there's also one for your opponents. And all of them are bad science.

So, it's not a science, it's a religion

[Anonymous Coward]

Falling into the 'cult' category

Who writes this crap

[awol]

"Those who oppose funding for behavioral science make a fundamental mistake: They assume that valuable science is limited to the "hard sciences." Social science can be just as valuable, but it's difficult to demonstrate that an experiment is valuable when you can't even demonstrate that it's replicable."

No, those of us that oppose the funding of this crap recognise that if you cannot replicate your "study" then it is not an experiment. If what you are doing cannot be proved (one way or the other) by experiment then IT IS NOT SCIENCE. I don't really care what it gets called and some of it may even be valuable for some values of valuable however the amount of dross that is produce by social researchers that try and call themselves scientists is truly extraordinary and a plague on our world.

Re:Who writes this crap

[Intrepid imaginaut]

The above comment is precisely why these "social sciences" need to be delegitimised and rubber-roomed until they can figure out the meaning of the phrase "scientific method". Grant them no authority in deciding government policy, massively defund them in academia, get them out of the courtrooms, and generally pillory them for the witchdoctors they are.

If you have to ask why, you're part of the problem.

Re:Freud's problem too

[sjwt]

Yup, like the recent one about men not being able to 'be alone with their own thouhgs'..

That same data can also read 'Men, more willing to put up with pain' or 'Men, more curious and want to know what they may experience'