/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7495019

People, there is a difference between psychology (which has lots of sub-disciplines: clinical psychology, social psychology, etc.), psychiatry (whichs is more rooted in medicine, but of course also takes from sub-disciplines like clinical psychology) and psychoanalysis (which is based on Freud (Super Ego, Ego, It) and has very little to do with actual modern psychology).

Psychoanalysts sort of founded the field, because they were the first to frame the right questions (about the unconscious), but they got all the answers wrong. This is how we got to modern psychology.

The problem which OP presented above is only partly methodical, the greater problem is the 'economy' of the scientific field. The bias towards positive results in order to get your paper published, get your name cited as often as possible and, thus, receive more internal as well as external funds. Replications are, economically, just not as valuable. For a complete replication you would need to gather all the data again, which is a very tedious process in the social sciences. If you then try to replicate the findings, you might get different results

a.) Everything is exactly the same, study was successfully reproduced. Great job! You selflessly sacrificed your time and effort in the name of proper science. Unfortunately we are not interested in publishing your findings, this new study about the sexual behaviour of siamese twins is more interesting.

b.) Negative or non-significant results. Oh shit, that's tense. If it's an interesting topic, we MIGHT get ourselves a publication. It is a safe bet, however, that some one is going to be pissed about this and might decide not to cite us in the future.


tl;dr:

It's a stupid system which doesn't really reward replications. Which is incredibly toxic for science.