(Wikimedia Commons public domain)
The title of the article to which I link below points to a fact with considerable ramifications for the integrity of psychology in particular and, perhaps, that of science more generally.
There has been considerable controversy over recent years about the realization that too many psychological and other research findings can’t be replicated — which likely means that their methodology was flawed, that their analysis was sloppy, or, even, that their data or results were forged.
And yet, as this article indicates, there is very little incentive for researchers to check up on the work of others. Their prestige, their salaries, sometimes their employment itself commonly depend upon their record of publication, and publishing venues just aren’t all that interested in articles that merely say, “Yep, the experiment that was published last year in the Journal of Residual Trivia by Dr. Langweilig, Dr. Taugenichts, and Dr. Vergangenheit was correct.” They want something new, something sexy:
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