From Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science blog, who is Susan Fiske and why does she think there are methodological terrorists running around? Rafi Letzter interviews Susan Fiske on the brutal firestorm in the field of psychology. Jesse Singal goes inside psychology’s “methodological terrorism” debate. Andrew Gelman on how the replication crisis is a big deal, but it’s a problem in lots of scientific fields — why is so much of the discussion about psychology research? Why it took social science years to correct a simple error about “psychoticism”. A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors — the results are concerning.
A worrying trend for psychology’s “simple little tricks”: In yet another setback for the field, researchers have failed to replicate two studies showing that basic techniques can reduce racial achievement gaps and improve voter turnout. Another classic finding in psychology — that you can smile your way to happiness — just blew up; is it time to panic yet? Debating psychology’s replication crisis: Should psychology researchers focus more on confirming old results and less on new discoveries? Psychology’s crisis isn’t new — what is new is the public attention and change that’s generating. What is wrong with social psychological science? It goes way beyond the “replication crisis”.
