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Replications can cause distorted belief in scientific progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2018

Michał Białek
Michał Białek*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada. mbialek@uwaterloo.cahttp://mbialek.com.pl Centre for Economic Psychology and Decision Sciences, Kozminski University, 03-301 Warsaw, Poland.
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Abstract

If we want psychological science to have a meaningful real-world impact, it has to be trusted by the public. Scientific progress is noisy; accordingly, replications sometimes fail even for true findings. We need to communicate the acceptability of uncertainty to the public and our peers, to prevent psychology from being perceived as having nothing to say about reality.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 41 , 2018 , e122
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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