Psychology’s replication crisis sparks new debate
Analyses of major reproducibility review reach conflicting conclusions
By Bruce Bower
Psychology got rocked last year by a report that many of the field’s published results vanish in repeat experiments. But that disturbing study sounded a false alarm, a controversial analysis finds.
The original investigation of 100 studies contained key errors, contend Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert and his colleagues. After correcting for those errors, the effects reported in 85 of those studies appeared in replications conducted by different researchers. So an initial conclusion that only 35 studies generated repeatable findings was a gross underestimate, Gilbert’s team reports in the March 4 Science.