Most Psychology And Other "Social Science" Studies Fail to Replicate
Between 65-89% of "social" science (primarily, Psychology) studies fail to replicate under peer review. And, to cement the obvious fact that human hypocrisy (i.e: denial of facts to prove one is always right, by fudging statistical data) and not mere human "error" is to blame, those liberal "intellectuals" interviewed here said it wasn't only the "soft" sciences that were wrong and forever mysteriously unknowably unknown and forever unknowable - but it was also all the underlying "hard" sciences which were wrong, too. "So there, Nyah!" ;-)
Psychologists confront impossible finding, triggering a revolution in the field
Daryl Bem's study proved the ability to sense the future is real, inspiring fundamental research changes
CBC Radio ·
In 2011, an American psychologist named Daryl Bem proved the
impossible. He showed that precognition — the ability to sense the
future — is real. His study was explosive, and shook the very
foundations of psychology. "This would probably be the most
important research paper I would say ever published in any field, if it
were true," said Jeff Galak, psychologist at Carnegie Mellon
University. "If
this paper were true, our understanding of the entire world, the
universe, physics, [and] psychology, for sure, would be completely
different," Galak said.
"We would no longer see time as this
linear thing that we move through, but instead something that can go
forwards and backwards. And we could reach into the future and pull
information from that — if it were true. And 'if 'is a big part of that
statement."
Replication crisis
Daryl Bem is a professor emeritus of psychology at Cornell University. His paper, Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect, was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology — a top-tier journal for the field. "The
[paper's] conclusion was ridiculous," said Chris Chambers, a professor
of cognitive neuroscience at Cardiff University in Wales. He's the
author of the book The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology. "And
this is really interesting because if a paper like this that's doing
everything normally and properly can end up producing a ridiculous
conclusion, then how many other papers that use those exact same methods
that didn't reach ridiculous conclusions are similarInly flawed?"
You have a right to scrutinize and verify and correct.
- Simine Vazire, psychologist
After Feeling the Future was published, a group called the Open Science Collaboration organized a massive replication study. And 270 scientists from 17 countries signed up. They picked 100 studies published in the year 2008 as their test sample — all from reputable, peer-reviewed psychology journals. The plan was to repeat all 100 experiments exactly as described, and then see what happens. The findings came out in 2015. The results were stunning: only 36 percent of replications were successful.
The ripple effect
University
of Toronto psychologist Michael Inzlicht was shocked to find that
research papers in his own area of research no longer held water. They
could not be replicated under the filter of more rigorous methodology. Michael Inzlicht is the principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social Neuroscience.
"I
had grown up a scientist believing in the scientific method and the
tools that we used, and all of a sudden, this one replication just made
me question everything," said Inzlicht. "What was real, what could I trust? The things I was studying... were they real? Could I trust them?"0 Inzlicht
is one of the psychologists leading the way to set new research
standards. He attributes the lapse in his field to the tremendous
pressure researchers face to produce new, high-impact research. "Basic science is not always about chasing the new," said Inzlicht. "It's
not always about chasing something groundbreaking. It's about building a
house. And if the foundations of the house are rotten, if from the
beginning a discipline was built on shoddy foundations, the entire
enterprise can fall."
Building a new foundation
Since 2011, standards for psychology research have indeed changed. What's
known as 'pre-registration' is becoming more common: researchers
writing up how they're going to conduct a study, what their hypotheses
are, and how they intend to analyze the data before doing their
experiment. This protocol prevents researchers from massaging the data
and reporting a positive result until they actually find one. More
than 200 scientific journals, both inside and outside psychology, now
publish "registered reports," reporting their decision whether to accept
or reject studies that are submitted before the experiments have
actually been performed. So the decision is based on the proposed
methodology and not how exciting the results are.
Alexander Kim is a journalist and radio producer based in Vancouver. (Submitted by Alexander B. Kim) Researchers also formed formed organizations like the Centre for Open Science and the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science."If
you're signing up to be a scientist, you're signing up to say 'check my
work'," said Simine Vazire, psychologist at the University of
California at Davis and one of the co-founders of the Society for the
Improvement of Psychological Science."Don't just take my word for it. Don't just trust me," said Vazire. "You have a right to scrutinize and verify and correct."
Guests in this episode:
Jeff Galak is a professor of marketing at Carnegie Mellon University.
Daryl Bemis professor emeritus of psychology at Cornell University.
Chris Chambersis
a professor of psychology specializing in cognitive neuroscience at
Cardiff University in Wales. He's also the author of the book, The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology.
Michael Inzlicht is
a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He's also a
principal investigator at the Toronto Laboratory for Social
Neuroscience.
Harry Collins is
a distinguished research professor of social science at Cardiff
University, specializing in scientific knowledge. He's the author of several books including Forms of Life: The method and meaning of sociology.
Alexa Tullet is
an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of
Alabama and co-founder of the Society for the Improvement of
Psychological Science.
Alison Ledgerwood is a professor of psychology at U.C. Davis. Special
thanks to Dr. Ed Kroc, for help with statistics; Dr. Candis Callison,
for help with philosophy of science; Tom Lowe, for recording Professor
Collins in Wales; Emma Partridge, for booking Professor Bem; and Cited
Media Productions, for supporting the making of this programme.
** This episode was written and produced by Alexander B. Kim of Cited Podast, with support from Ideas Senior Producer Nicola Luksic.
AND, JUST AS BAD, IF NOT WORSE, IT'S THE SAME PROBLEM FOR BIOLOGY (HEMATOLOGY AND ONCOLOGY) STUDIES, TOO!
From here: Fake science is rampant A new report by the national Association of Scholars has looked into what it calls the "use and abuse of statistics in sciences" and found that a lot of scientific research cannot be reproduced. That's code word for, it's fake… or at the very least highly biased. The report didn't say that specifically, but did call it a "politicization of science," which we see as the same thing, because politicized news is now being called fake news. The report was co-authored by David Randall and Christopher Wesler, and was titled "The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science: Causes, Consequences, and the Road to Reform." It focused on how published scientific studies could not be replicated and was spurred by a 2012 study that found that of 53 landmark studies in oncology and hematology, only six could be replicated. "Not all irreproducible research is progressive advocacy; not all progressive advocacy is irreproducible; but the intersection between the two is very large. The intersection between the two is a map of much that is wrong with modern science," the report states. A reproducibility crisis afflicts a wide range of scientific and social-scientific disciplines, from epidemiology to social psychology. Improper use of statistics, arbitrary research techniques, lack of accountability, political groupthink, and a scientific culture biased toward producing positive results together have produced a critical state of affairs. Many supposedly scientific results cannot be reproduced in subsequent investigations. This study examines the different aspects of the reproducibility crisis of modern science. The report also includes a series of policy recommendations, scientific and political, for alleviating the reproducibility crisis. https://www.nas.org/projects/irreproducibility_report https://www.nas.org/images/documents/irreproducibility_report/NAS_irreproducibilityReport.pdf As reported here: https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/44834/ Many studies’ results cannot be reproduced, scholars warnMark McGreal - UCLA •May 10, 2018 Don’t believe the latest study you read in the headlines, chances are, it could be wrong, according to a new report by the National Association of Scholars that delves into what it calls the “use and abuse of statistics in the sciences.” The report broke down the issue of irreproducibility, or the problem that a lot of scientific research cannot be reproduced. The report took aim at unverifiable climate science, but also critiqued medical studies, behavioral research and other fields. The 72-page report took the matter a step further in calling the issue a politicization of science. “Not all irreproducible research is progressive advocacy; not all progressive advocacy is irreproducible; but the intersection between the two is very large. The intersection between the two is a map of much that is wrong with modern science,” the report states. Co-authored by David Randall and Christopher Wesler, “The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science: Causes, Consequences, and the Road to Reform” focused on the irreproducibility of recent scientific studies. It references a study performed by researchers at Amgen in 2012. For this study, researchers tried to reproduce the results of “53 landmark studies in oncology and hematology.” Researchers were only able to replicate the results of six studies. “People have found similar results in psychology and economics. Different fields are affected different amounts,” Randall told The College Fix. “As a rule of thumb, fields that use statistics intensively are more likely to have troubles than fields that don’t.” NAS Director of Research David Randall speaks about the role that the federal government can play in the #reproducibilitycrisis – only granting funding for preregistered experiments/procedures is one example. #openscience #scientificresearch #transparency pic.twitter.com/ztpa8uaf18 — NAS Scholars (@NASorg) April 17, 2018 The report hypothesized that there are a number of different reasons for irreproducibility that include such things as “flawed statistics, faulty data, deliberate exclusion of data, and political groupthink,” among other reasons. “Actual fraud on the part of researchers appears to be a growing problem,” the report also states. “‘Stereotype threat’ as an explanation for poor academic performance? Didn’t reproduce. ‘Social priming,’ which argues that unnoticed stimuli can significantly change behavior? Didn’t reproduce that well … Tests of implicit bias as predictors of discriminatory behavior? The methodology turned out to be dubious, and the test of implicit bias may have been biased itself,” the report states. The report also alludes multiple times to the notion that climate science is on shaky ground. “Climate science has significant work to do to make its data and its statistical procedures properly reproducible,” Randall said. Randall cited Judith Curry, a world-renowned climatologist, who has warned that the climate science field is heavily affected by groupthink, a collective way of thinking that has been known to stop individuals from questioning widely accepted theories. Randall said he believes that climate change data needs to be reproducible because it is “more than usually intrusive into the lives of Americans.” #Irreproducibility co-author Christopher Welser lists a number of examples of irreproducible research & results that were found later to be false that are mentioned in our report. https://t.co/0qllk7FST4 #openscience #science #transparencyinscience pic.twitter.com/BwzlTdAny8 — NAS Scholars (@NASorg) April 17, 2018 To provide the public with accurate statistical information, the report endorses the expansion of the Secret Science Reform Act of 2015 to cut down on irreproducible data used to back public policy. When asked what the average person could do in order to make sure that the information that is backing public policy is credible, Randall recommended: “Always ask ‘has this study been reproduced? Did this study have pre-registered research protocols? Does it support an unpopular belief?’ If the answer to any of these is no, suspend judgment. Don’t disbelieve blindly, but don’t believe blindly either.”
In 2011, an American psychologist named Daryl Bem proved the
impossible. He showed that precognition — the ability to sense the
future — is real. His study was explosive, and shook the very
foundations of psychology.
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