<story><title>If you think psychological science is bad, imagine how bad it was in 1999</title><url>https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/06/16/wow-just-wow-if-you-think-psychological-science-as-bad-in-the-2010-2015-era-you-cant-imagine-how-bad-it-was-back-in-1999/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>m12k</author><text>When you think about it, it&amp;#x27;s insane that metascience isn&amp;#x27;t studied more. We&amp;#x27;re going to question every little detail about the universe, but we&amp;#x27;re just going to take on faith that peer-review and publication in journals is an effective method for weeding out &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; science?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munificent</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; it&amp;#x27;s insane that metascience isn&amp;#x27;t studied more.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is, probably more than is apparent. See:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Philosophy_of_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Philosophy_of_science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sociology_of_scientific_knowledge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Sociology_of_scientific_knowle...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is an interesting recursive problem here, though: what tools do you use to scientifically analyze the scientific process? Whatever tools you use will themselves be hobbled by the same systemic flaws you are trying to understand.&lt;p&gt;Also, as any sociologist will be happy to tell you, incentive structures and other human group behavior gets in the way. It&amp;#x27;s probably hard to get funding for a study that shows that all the other departments at your university aren&amp;#x27;t quite the flawless seekers of truth they appear to be.</text></comment>
<story><title>If you think psychological science is bad, imagine how bad it was in 1999</title><url>https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/06/16/wow-just-wow-if-you-think-psychological-science-as-bad-in-the-2010-2015-era-you-cant-imagine-how-bad-it-was-back-in-1999/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>m12k</author><text>When you think about it, it&amp;#x27;s insane that metascience isn&amp;#x27;t studied more. We&amp;#x27;re going to question every little detail about the universe, but we&amp;#x27;re just going to take on faith that peer-review and publication in journals is an effective method for weeding out &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; science?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bluetomcat</author><text>&amp;quot;People&amp;quot; sciences like sociology, psychology and economics can make incredibly misleading claims because one experiment over a small sample of people at a certain moment in time might seem to support a claim, while the actual reason for the observed results is a factor which is never taken in consideration. On the other hand, conducting those experiments over wider demographics and in different points in time means that the study wants to build &amp;quot;universal&amp;quot; models of how each single person in the whole world acts, which is utterly dismissive of the specific local environment around people.&lt;p&gt;Sociology in particular should always be approached highly critically, because applying those theories and reasoning in its terms often means mass control over people&amp;#x27;s free will.</text></comment>