Amid the hot-button topics like free speech and safe spaces, we often lose sight of the true problems that surround our academic institutions. Problems that deserve the most attention are not surface-level political issues but should be the problems with the education we pay so much to receive. The replicability crisis may be one of the most pressing matters academics in the social sciences face.
The replicability crisis developed as a result of many psychological experiments being unable to replicate their results. In 2015, a group of psychologists from the University of Virginia tried to reproduce the results of 100 published psychological experiments in an initiative called the Reproducibility Project. The initiative had pitiful results, with only about a third of the psychologists replicating only about a third of the results.
The consequences of this crisis are incredibly damaging to academia. If a study’s findings cannot be replicated by other social scientists, then its findings cannot be trusted. As we are seeing now, this problem expands to a large portion of psychological experiments, including some textbook concepts. This type of uncertainty around basic concepts calls into question the education we are receiving within the social sciences and particularly in the field of psychology.
Now there is absolutely no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater at this point. Right now, the field of psychology and other social sciences are being put under much-needed and healthy strain, with many of the practices it has used being called into question. We as academics must be cognizant of the context surrounding the information we are learning.
As more attention is brought to the issue, we are uncovering problems that are results of traditional psychology practices. For instance, some researchers believed that erroneous methods of seeking data are in part to blame for the inability to replicate data. An example of such flawed methods would be studies that were conducted with small sample sizes that do not yield statistical significance on the population at large. Even more troubling, some hypothesize that results may not be replicable as a result of the original experimenters falsifying their results.
Budding psychologists should be tasked with learning the importance of replication in our classes. Universities should bolster psychological research by adopting lab practicums to accompany lecture courses. Much like hard science courses, labs would accompany psychology courses to allow students to see real-world applications of the concepts they are learning, as well as help them become better researchers.
An emphasis on such courses could help reduce poor methods of collecting data that may be attributable to the crisis we are currently seeing. Adopting a culture that emphasizes replication could help with efforts to reproduce older studies that have not been through rigorous replication processes.
Psychology professors and other social science professors whose subjects have been lumped into this crisis should inform their students of this ongoing issue. It should also be a priority of professors to inform students of concepts in their course material that are currently under scrutiny.
The replication crisis as it stands is certainly a black eye on psychology and other social sciences, but it is up to those in the field to correct its course. Through tightening up practices and disposing of theories that are not replicable, we can propel the field back to a purely scientific state.
