I have been following closely the storm currently raging
throughout social psychology in regards to results replicability. After the
exposure of several prominent names in the field such as Diederik Stapel,
Dirk Smeesters and Lawrence Sanna, who presented falsified and outright
fraudulent results for years, you cannot open Nature or Science magazine
without stumbling across yet another failed attempt to come to terms with influential
studies which, well, cannot be proved either right or wrong.
I disagree however with the stigmatization of a
particular discipline. The way the matter is dealt with in the social sciences
is not unlike the cautious behaviour individuals adopted during the Black
Plague – mark the ailing house with a black cross, quarantine the infected and hope
you have hidden somewhere far outside of the malaise’s ghastly reach. This is
just an illusion. A much broader discussion and a clean sweep are needed
throughout the Social Sciences. When the day of judgement comes, many a study
in sociology, economics and social psychology may indeed be found needing in
the replication department. The Cambridge Replication Workshop organized for
Harvard students studying Social Science Research Methods have notoriously struggled
with academics agreeing to secure the datasets on which important and
well-published research is based. The issue has become so pervasive that the Economic
and Social Research Council in Britain is considering obliging academics to make
both the datasets and the data drilling files generated during the research
funded by the council publicly available. This may seem like a pain but is more
than a necessary evil. As a social scientist, we all make some particular
decisions about cleaning and modifying our datasets but these, hopefully, come
with a rationale behind them that is justifiable and should be open to critique.
Vague and evasive claims that replication attempts have failed in following the
intrinsic logic of a study are not acceptable or we might just as well scrap
the ‘science’ bit in our social science CVs.
We owe it to ourselves, to the field and to
other colleagues, especially young ones, to ask the hard questions. As Daniel
Kahneman said in an open letter to social psychologists: “… I see a train wreck looming. I expect the first victims to be
young people on the job market. Being associated with a controversial and
suspicious field will put them at a severe disadvantage in the competition for
positions.” All our social science fields have become increasingly
competitive, and although the pressures of academia cannot be an excuse for
fraud, we need to acknowledge the major restructuring in our disciplines and
academic careers, and respond accordingly. Neither by ditching old-fashioned research morale and scientific rigour down the drain, nor by vilifying and excommunicating some for the sake of keeping deep treacherous waters still.
