AndyPR
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For years now, researchers have been warning about a reproducibility crisis in science - the realisation that a lot of seminal papers, particularly in psychology, don't actually hold up when scientists take the time to try to reproduce the results.
Now, two more key papers in the psychology have failed the reproducibility test, serving as an important reminder that many of the scientific 'facts' we've come to believe aren't necessarily as steadfast as we thought.
To be fair, just because findings can't be reproduced, it doesn't automatically mean they're wrong. Replication is an important part of the scientific method that helps us nut out what's really going on - it could be that the new researchers did something differently, or that the trend is more subtle than originally thought.
But the problem is that, for decades now, the importance of replicating results has been largely overlooked, with researchers usually choosing to chase a 'new' discovery rather than fact-checking an old one - thanks to the pressure to publish exciting and novel findings in order to secure jobs.
http://www.sciencealert.com/two-more-classic-psychology-studies-just-failed-the-reproducibility-test
Not quite sure I agree with this opinion though, although, to be fair, my knowledge of psychological studies is more than somewhat limited.
"It shows how much effort and attention has gone towards improving the accuracy of the knowledge produced," John Ioannidis, a Stanford University researcher who led a 2005 reproducibility study, told Olivia Goldhill at Quartz.
"Psychology is a discipline that has always been very strong methodologically and was at the forefront at describing various biases and better methods. Now they are again taking the lead in improving their replication record."