Psychology Exceptionalism and the Multiple Discovery of the Replication Crisis

This article outlines what we call the “narrative of psychology exceptionalism” in commentaries on the replication crisis: many thoughtful commentaries link the current crisis to the specificity of psychology’s history, methods, and subject matter, but explorations of the similarities between psychology and other fields are comparatively thin. Historical analyses of the replication crisis in psychology further contribute to this exceptionalism by creating a genealogy of events and personalities that shares little in common with other fields. We aim to rebalance this narrative by examining the emergence and evolution of replication discussions in psychology alongside their emergence and evolution in biomedicine. Through a mixed-methods analysis of commentaries on replication in psychology and the biomedical sciences, we find that these conversations have, from the early years of the crisis, shared a common core that centers on concerns about the effectiveness of traditional peer review, the need for greater transparency in methods and data, and the perverse incentive structure of academia. Drawing on Robert Merton’s framework for analyzing multiple discovery in science, we argue that the nearly simultaneous emergence of this narrative across fields suggests that there are shared historical, cultural, or institutional factors driving disillusionment with established scientific practices.

The Tone Debate: Knowledge, Self, and Social Order

In the replication crisis in psychology, a “tone debate” has developed. It concerns the question of how to conduct scientific debate effectively and ethically. How should scientists give critique without unnecessarily damaging relations? The increasing use of Facebook and Twitter by researchers has made this issue especially pressing, as these social technologies have greatly expanded the possibilities for conversation between academics, but there is little formal control over the debate. In this article, we show that psychologists have tried to solve this issue with various codes of conduct, with an appeal to virtues such as humility, and with practices of self-transformation. We also show that the polemical style of debate, popular in many scientific communities, is itself being questioned by psychologists. Following Shapin and Schaffer’s analysis of the ethics of Robert Boyle’s experimental philosophy in the 17th century, we trace the connections between knowledge, social order, and subjectivity as they are debated and revised by present-day psychologists.

Replication crisis – Just Another Instance of the Replication of Crises in Psychology? Historical Retrospections and Theoretical-Psychological Assessments

The current dismay within the mainstream of nomological psychology may result from the fact that the anomaly of non-replicability has a direct bearing on its very own methodological requirements and quality criteria of empirical research. The call for more scientific rigour on the customary avenue in order to secure unambiguous empirical findings gives, however, rise to suspect that the deeper reason for this anomaly is not yet recognised: namely, the misguided regulation of a strictly objective inquiry, distorting what is present and relevant in everyday life and treating the ‘subjective’ of the subject matter as the central root of interfering factors which have to be eliminated or neutralised in the pursuit of experimental hypothesis testing. The problems of replicability would thus be a proof once again that the notorious inversion between matter and method does not really work, due to the uncircumventable characteristics of human inter-/subjectivity. In this sense, the replication crisis replicates the perennial topic of all historical discussions about a crisis in psychology – the failure of a ‘psychology without subject’.

Open Science for Veterinary Education

“Open Science” encourages researchers to improve the reliability, repeatability and reproducibility of results. While stemming from the reproducibility crisis in psychology, open science is relevant for all fields. In education research these practices include pre-registering experimental designs, sharing analyses where appropriate, and pre-printing research report. How can veterinary education implement these lessons? In this short report accompanying the ‘Open Science for VetEd’ workshop, hosted at the VetEd 2021 Annual Conference, I discuss what opportunities open science presents for veterinary education researchers.

Crisis” and “re-foundation” of psychology – outmoded topics of theoretical-psychological discourse?

In the 1970-80ies critical assessments of the problematic state of psychology as science were flourishing, stressing the theoretical disintegration and practical irrelevance of psychological basic research and connecting both defects to a misplaced dependence of mainstream psychology on a scientistic notion of scientific cognition. Talks of a crisis in psychology were gaining ground again. Controverting the paradigmatic maturity vs. the pre-/non-paradigmatic state of our discipline or, alternatively, its necessarily multi-paradigmatic character, the quest for unification as against a programmatic theoretical pluralism became a top issue of scholarly dispute. The institutionalisation of ISTP in 1985 and its initial epistemological and meta-theoretical core themes clearly reflected this pervasive trend. Some 35 years later, it has become noticeably quiet about such concerns, and there is no evidence of a renewal of large-scale discussions on a foundational crisis in psychology, let alone of ambitious attempts at theoretical unification or re-foundation – despite the fact that none of the “epistemopathologial“ (Koch, 1981) diagnoses of traditional variable-psychology have been refuted or lost strategic importance. Combining historical retrospection with an exemplary analysis of topical theoretical-psychological subjects, the aim of my paper is to get a clearer idea of where Theoretical Psychology currently stands in regard to the meta-scientific study of psychological theory-problems.

The tone debate: knowledge, self, and social order

In the replication crisis in Psychology a 'tone debate' has developed. It concerns the question of how to conduct scientific debate effectively and ethically. How should scientists give critique without unnecessarily damaging relations? The increasing use of Facebook and Twitter by researchers has made this issue especially pressing, as these social technologies have greatly expanded the possibilities for conversation between academics, but there is little formal control over the debate. In this paper we show that psychologists have tried to solve this issue with various codes of conduct, with an appeal to virtues such as humility, and with practices of self-transformation. We also show that the polemical style of debate, popular in many scientific communities, is itself being questioned by psychologists. Following Shapin and Schaffer's analysis of the ethics of Robert Boyle's experimental philosophy in the 17th century, we trace the connections between knowledge, social order, and subjectivity as they are debated and revised by present-day psychologists.

Ego depletion: A review of criticisms along with new perspectives for the replicable investigation of self-control fatigue as a multicomponent phenomenon

The replication crisis in psychology has led to question popular psychological phenomena such as ego depletion, which has been criticized after studies failed to replicate. Here, we describe limitations in the literature that contributed to these failures and suggest how they may be addressed. At the theoretical level, the literature focuses on two out of at least eight identified auxiliary hypotheses. Thus, the majority of the hypotheses related to the three core assumptions of the ego-depletion theory have been overlooked, thereby preventing the rejection of the theory as a whole. At the experimental level, we argue that the low replicability of ego-depletion studies could be explained by the absence of a comprehensive, integrative, and falsifiable definition of self-control, which is central to the concept of ego depletion; by an unclear or absent distinction between ego depletion and mental fatigue, two phenomena that rely on different processes; and by the low validity of the tasks used to induce ego depletion. Finally, we make conceptual and practical suggestions for a more rigorous investigation of ego depletion, discuss the necessity to take into account its dynamic and multicomponent nature, and suggest using the term self-control fatigue instead.

The Validation Crisis in Psychology

Cronbach and Meehl (1955) introduced the concept of construct validity and described how researchers can demonstrate that their measures have construct validity. Although the term construct validity is widely used, few researchers follow Cronbach and Meehl’s recommendation to quantify construct validity with the help of nomological networks. As a result, the construct validity of many popular measures in psychology is unknown. I call for rigorous tests of construct validity that follow Cronbach and Meehl’s recommendations to improve psychology as a science. Without valid measures even replicable results are uninformative. I suggest that a proper program of validation research requires a multi-method approach and causal modeling of correlations with structural equation models. Construct validity should be quantified to enable cost-benefit analyses and to replace existing measures with better measures that have superior construct validity.