
Psychology’s Replication Crisis Is Running Out of Excuses - laurex
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/576223
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b_tterc_p
Serious question: how do these experiments come into existence? E.g. the
Macbeth effect or the marshmallow test? It always feels like they show very
specific effects and are extrapolated to explain broad parts of the human
psyche. But since there isn’t really any objective basis for creating
hypotheses, I have to imagine people just sit around, think of some idea that
sounds cool, and then come up with an experiment that is cheap to execute,
kind of zany and memorable, and easy to swing one way or the other.

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tonysdg
I do research in engineering, not psychology, but if I had to guess: probably
the same way a lot of engineering research comes about. You read the
literature, see interesting results somewhere, and questions start to pop into
your head based on the reading ("hey, that's cool! I wonder what would happen
if...").

The tricky part becomes actually answering that question: designing an
experiment to test a hypothesis is deceptively hard. In my area (computer
engineering), often times the hardware or software to test your hypothesis
does not exist, so you're left searching for analogues and work-arounds that
emulate the desired behavior. I could easily see some of these experiments
operating under a similar idea.

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c3534l
> it seems that one of the most reliable findings in psychology is that only
> half of psychological studies can be successfully repeated

Oof. That's a good line.

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viburnum
Is there a summary of which results did hold up?

