Saturday, August 09, 2014

Woops, there goes another idea about science!


I quote the abstract of an article in a May issue of Science magazine:
This week, a global network of nearly 100 psychologists unveiled the results of their attempt to repeat 27 well-known psychology studies. In more than half of the cases, the replication was a partial or complete failure. Some are heralding the replications as a renaissance for the social sciences. But some on the receiving end of the replication are calling it an inquisition.
As I have written several times in this blog, scientific journals are more interested in surprising findings of research than in results that confirm already well supported hypotheses. This study suggests that, at least in the psychology community, more effort should be done to replicate published findings and more of the replication studies merit publication.

 I must admit that I think that psychology is less developed than some other sciences. I would be surprised if astronomers or physicists were to find equal portions of publications in their fields could not be replicated.

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