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There's a related criticism made by some economists about psychology: the 1-800 critique.[1] The pattern is that psychologists claim that effect X exists, e.g. "hostile media bias" or "social identity" or "priming". But they don't say when it will apply, i.e. in what circumstances. So the critique was, these guys need to put a 1-800 number on their papers, so you can call them and ask, hey will your effect apply in my situation?

[1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.199....




The ridiculous thing is the researchers not only don't know but they don't care because they never controlled for those factors and never even bothered to replicate their own experiment in different situations to explore the scope of applicability. Nor even replicate it in the same situation. It's as if they're trying to hide the truth from themselves because really they know it's a fraud and they'll only end up exposing the nothingness of their finding if they try too hard.




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