Why the Witch Doctor Headdress is last Season’s Fashion in the Psychology Community: The Replication Crisis and Why it’s Bad Juju.

In today’s society, everything is variable. Each human behaves in different ways and subsequently reacts in different ways to different stimulants. While some of us are skilled at shooting a firearm, others of us are better at art. This is important because most of the social sciences as well as much of the research performed on or involving humans can have issues with variation and measurement error.

What I found interesting about the “What has happened down here is the winds have changed” article is that they split up the argument of the replication crisis and used a storm analogy to describe each of the parts. While I find a giant storm rushing in and sweeping away stereo-typical scientists who had poor experimental design and studies filled with errors, it does accurately portray the replication crisis as a disaster. Like with many other disasters of our lifetime (Hurricane Katrina, California Flooding, etc.) things that we neglected to do caused these disasters to become much worse. The article created a timeline that breaks down what was done to get us where we are today and why some individuals are so inclined to keep going with the old ways, soon to be swept away with the rising waters.

The Replication Crisis is something that every scientist should be concerned about, as the credibility of our field and the ground we stand on is slowly taken away inch by inch with every poorly executed study. Digging deeper than what the two articles addressed (Article A, Article B), I found (insert article title) that took on the replication crisis and attempted to show how few articles could actually be replicated. According to Monya Baker, over half of the studies are unable to be replicated (Baker, 2015). The unbelievable part is that only 36% of the studies were able to find significant results.

If you are interested in the replication crisis and why it is so prevalent in the psychology field, compared to other fields, I would highly recommend reading Andrew’s article that is linked following the “What has happened down here is the winds have changed” article. This next article, “Why is the scientific replication crisis centered on psychology?”, breaks down in five points why the replication crisis is hitting the psychology community compared to other fields of study. The section he argues that I found most interesting was the section about psychology’s accessibility as the reason why mistakes are so commonly found.

While nobody can be perfect, we do need to continue forward and accept criticism as constructive words instead of personal attacks. Until then, we will continue to see researchers bury criticism and the replication rate will still be unacceptably low. With the growing prevalence of researchers posting their research online allows for quick responses and ideas to be shared freely. If nothing changes, we will see the word of social psychologists become similar to that of pseudo scientists.

On the Witch Doctor note, did anyone else notice that the “What has happened down here is the winds have changed” article was filed under “Zombies”? Maybe I’m the only one who found that amusing.

References

Baker, M. (2015, August 27) Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test. Nature. Retrieved from: http://www.nature.com/news /over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail- reproducibility-test-1.18248 doi:10.1038/nature.2015.18248