There once was a time when psychologists ran the world of psychology. Everything was hunky-dory in this world where psychologists would follow a set method of research, have some standards of what separated good research from a bad one, and try to understand human behaviour and cognition through the scientific method. It wasn’t the perfect world, but it was good enough.
That was until a meteor struck.
A Meteor Named Daryl Bem
In 2011, Daryl Bem, a famous social psychologist published a study that was the culmination of 10 years worth of research. From Bem’s point of view, he did everything he was supposed to do to consider his research a strong, rigorous and scientific one.
See in psychology, not every research is the same. There are some set rules, a method, that you have to follow to consider your research a ‘good’ one.
You must have a big sample size
You must have a statistically significant result
You must have valid tools that you use to measure your findings. etc.
Bem, on his part, did all these things.
The problem was he ended up proving that humans have the ability of precognition and premonition (or ESP) in his studies. He had, quite literally, broken the laws of physics.
When his research was published, mainstream psychologists rightly thought that the claims he was making were bizarre at best but they couldn’t figure out how he managed to come to these conclusions with such a…strong methodology.
Bem’s research method was solid but his conclusion was physically impossible.
It was clear that there was something wrong with the ‘methodology’ psychology had been considering the right one so far. Every single research that had used similar research methods was under the scanner. This included pretty much every research.
The meteor had struck.
Fire, Fire Everywhere
Psychologists started wondering what else could they be getting wrong if they used the same methodology for their conclusions. See the thing was, if Bem had proposed he proved something less outlandish, his research would have been considered a gold standard of psychological research.
What else was pretending to be gold in psychology?
A lot of research was checked again. Even research that is mentioned in textbooks as psychology facts was relooked at.
In order to confirm the validity of a scientific concept, we reproduce it. We see if the result of one research is replicated/reproduced in another research while using the same methodology.
There were a lot of pretenders.
A lot of concepts did not reproduce.
Psychology was plunged into what is called ‘The Reproducibility Crisis’. A large scale project by Brian Nosek tried to replicate the results of 100 psychology papers published in well-respected journals.
Only 40 of them passed the test.
It is estimated that only 50% of all psychological findings can be reproduced.
Here are some popular ideas that have failed to replicate so far
Power Poses: Ever thought that the right pose or the right clothes can make you more confident and respectable? Well, you might but it’s not based on any real science.
Stereotype Threat: There was an idea that if people are reminded of the stereotype associated with their social groups, they perform poorer. For eg. When women are told that they are not expected to do well in a math exam due to their gender, their scores are worse off than they would be without this info.
Social Priming: The idea that people’s behaviours can be changed by simply activating a schema in their mind.
And there are a lot more just like them.
What does it Mean?
Is Psychology just wrong most of the time? If so, can we really trust anything psychological research says? Well, not exactly.
The thing is, research, or science as a whole, attempts to achieve an approximate understanding of the reality around us. It is very rare that a science can offer a definitive right or wrong answer on anything. (Physics is an exception.)
Is any concept which fails to reproduce wrong? Not really. It means that our understanding of the concept may not be good enough yet, or that the concept needs to be moulded in the face of evidence.
It is tough to say that a concept is just wrong as a whole.
Psychology is going through a replication crisis, but it is not alone.
Neuroscience, Oncology, even molecular chemistry has found itself in a quagmire of its own replication crisis. All of these fields will emerge from their struggles with stronger methodologies and better standards of research.
In this regard, psychology might actually be ahead of the curve of the other disciplines.
Daryl Bem, the meteor that struck Psychology did not wipe it out. He simply changed the way psychology went on. Much like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, the world did not end with it. The world as it was, changed forever.