Psychologists testify in courts making predictions about the future based on personal opinions which cause people to lose their freedom. On Friday August 28, 2015 Rush Limbaugh discussed this story and noted that the same problem exists with other kinds of academic research. Universities like Harvard get $140 million a year in taxpayer funds to do research. How reliable are their published findings? They are permitted to be their own judges. Clueless politicians adore these academic priests and use what they say to make public policy. How strange is that?
[From article]
A major investigation into scores of claims made in psychology research journals has delivered a bleak verdict on the state of the science.
An international team of experts repeated 100 experiments published in top psychology journals and found that they could reproduce only 36% of original findings.
The study, which saw 270 scientists repeat experiments on five continents, was launched by psychologists in the US in response to rising concerns over the reliability of psychology research.
[. . .]
Brian Nosek, a professor at the University of Virgina: “Science is a process of uncertainty reduction, and no one study is almost ever a definitive result on its own.”
[. . .]
In the investigation, a whopping 75% of the social psychology experiments were not replicated, meaning that the originally reported findings vanished when other scientists repeated the experiments. Half of the cognitive psychology studies failed the same test. Details are published in the journal Science.
“Scepticism is a core part of science and we need to embrace it. If the evidence is tentative, you should be sceptical of your evidence. We should be our own worst critics,” [Nosek] told the Guardian.
[. . .]
In 2005, [John Ioannidis, professor of health research and policy at Stanford University] published a seminal study that explained why most published research findings are false.
Marcus Munafo, a co-author on the study and professor of psychology at Bristol University, said: “I think it’s a problem across the board, because wherever people have looked, they have found similar issues.” In 2013, he published a report with Ioannidis that found serious statistical weaknesses were common in neuroscience studies.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/study-delivers-bleak-verdict-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results
Study delivers bleak verdict on validity of psychology experiment results
Of 100 studies published in top-ranking journals in 2008, 75% of social psychology experiments and half of cognitive studies failed the replication test
Psychology experiments are failing the replication test – for good reason
There are many reasons why an experiment might fail to replicate, but more than this, the study has highlighted some issues with academic publishing and modern science.
Ian Sample Science editor
@iansample
Thursday 27 August 2015 14.00 EDT
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