
Replication Crisis - usui
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
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cheese4242
Many of the studies you read about in your intro Psychology textbook cannot be
reproduced: [https://replicationindex.com/2018/12/21/social-psychology-
te...](https://replicationindex.com/2018/12/21/social-psychology-textbooks/)

It really is quite shocking. Having grown up learning about the scientific
method, I had always assumed that these studies had been thoroughly peer-
reviewed and meticulously replicated before they would be authoritatively
presented in a textbook. A good example is the famous Stanford prison
experiment which has essentially never been successfully replicated.

Really makes you wonder what other bullshit we have been fed.

~~~
vikramkr
It doesn't help that many of those experiments are deeply unethical to run and
so simply can't be reproduced anymore anyway for institutional and moral
reasons. The Stanford prison experiment was particularly egregious in that the
experimenter actually played the role of superintendent in the prison,
contaminating the data.

I'm always cautious of conclusions drawn from studies with these sorts of
ethical issues. If the researcher was comfortable causing harm to other human
beings (whether undergrads or little albert or anyone else) in order to get a
result, then why would we expect them to be honest about what the data showed?
I'm sure this is some sort of cognitive bias that's been explained by a
hopefully replicable study and that the willingness to cross a moral/ethical
line in running a study doesn't have to imply willingness to cross a
moral/ethical line in fudging data and drawing conclusions, but combined with
the lack of reproducibility, I think those studies should be largely
discounted as sources of psychology knowledge

