Researchers ought to be able to duplicate the findings of other scientists’ work, but a new study suggests that many published psychology results can't be recreated. 
 
 A huge, collaborative research project attempted to recreate 100 studies that were recently published in major psychology journals, and it found that only 39 of those studies' results could be replicated. That could mean that the studies were wrong in the first place, but researchers say that the findings tell more about the difficulty of designing a reproducible study than the accuracy of the studies themselves. 
 
 Studies need to be reproducible so that scientists can confirm their effects. That's why scientists have generally pushed toward reproducing studies — and not just in psychology. In part, that's to catch scientific fraud, but it's also simply to make scientific findings more trustworthy. In January 2014, the National Institutes of Health announced it would create new initiatives to address these concerns, but there still aren't widely established reproducibility guidelines. The study being published today speaks to why a bigger focus on reproducibility is necessary. 
 
 "The results present an opportunity." 
 
 "I don’t see this story as negative or pessimistic," Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia researcher and the study's corresponding author, told reporters this week. "The results present an opportunity, and the project is a demonstration of science demonstrating one of its central qualities: self-correction." 
 
 That self-correction even extended to the 39 studies that researchers were able to replicate. Of those, 83 percent had smaller effects that were in the initial reports; the drop in effect size was usually around 50 percent. The report is being published today in the journal Science. 
 
 Nosek says that there are three reasons studies' results may not have been replicated or may have changed. First, it's possible that the original result identified an effect that wasn't real. Second, it's possible that the researchers failed to detect a real effect in the reproduction. Finally, it's possible that both studies were accurate but that their methodologies differed in slight but meaningful ways. 
 
 The scientists attempting to reproduce studies tried to hew closely to the originals; they even worked with the original researchers and published their study designs for feedback from the over 270 people who worked on the reproduction project. That certainly suggests that errors are being made throughout these experiments, which mostly focused on social psychology and cognitive psychology. But for these researchers, the differing results suggests something else: that there’s a problem with the reproduction process. 
 
 "Despite its central importance, there is little known about the reproducibility of research in general," Nosek said. "And there has been a growing concern that reproducibility may be lower than expected or desired." 
 
 Research is typically focused on new results, not reproduction 
 
 One factor encouraging that, Nosek suggests, is researchers' desire for publication. Succeeding in academia means regularly publishing work, and novel results — rather than reproductions of older results or results that fail to establish a correlation — are far more likely to make it into prestigious journals. "If this occurs on a broad scale, then the published literature may be more beautiful than reality," Nosek says. 
 
 To move toward more repeatable studies, researchers and journals need to shift their interests away from novelty, the current focus. That's part of why the people behind this study — operating as part of an initiative from the Open Science Collaboration called the Reproducibility Project: Psychology — worked with the original researchers whose studies they were replicating. It encouraged them to view these experiments as steps forward, not as threats to their work. 
 
 E.J. Masicampo, a researcher at Wake Forest University, both conducted one of the reproductions and had one of his own studies reproduced by someone else. "Mine was a study that did not successfully replicate," Masicampo told reporters. His study had looked at whether giving someone a sugary beverage made it easier for them to make mentally challenging decisions while fatigued. 
 
 Both Masicampo's study and its replication asked students to decide between apartments of different sizes and distances from a college campus. It turned out that the decision was difficult for students at Florida State, where Masicampo was working, but the question was too easy for students at the University of Virginia, where it was being reproduced. "What we found, I think, was that the [methodology] that worked at the original location ... didn't quite translate for participants at the replication location," Masicampo said. 
 
 How exact must a replication be? 
 
 The group was trying to be very faithful to the original study, Masicampo said. The fact that doing so resulted in a failed replication, "highlighted the issue of how exact these replications should be and how much things change going from one place to another." Were replication standards to be put in place, these questions might be answered and lead to a clearer view of each finding's accuracy. 
 
 The researchers want to underscore that this isn't a failure of science — it's just science working normally. "The real challenge here is that we so much want to have clear answers from any individual study, from any program of research, from any report about studies," Nosek said. "But science doesn't provide certainty. At least not immediately." 
 
 Of course, all that may make you wonder: how reproducible are these findings? "It's a very good question and I don't envy the group trying it again," Nosek said. "But it does illustrate the precise point of the reproducibility effort: that even this project itself is not a final word, a last word, a definitive word about reproducibility." ||||| This involves rewriting own memory to believe incorrect version of events 
 
 Psychologists say some are in danger of 
 
 To judge by their posts on Facebook, they are having the time of their lives. But almost two-thirds of social-media users lie to ‘airbrush reality’ and make their lives seem more interesting than they are, according to a revealing new survey. 
 
 The findings have led psychologists to warn that some may succumb to ‘digital amnesia’, believing their own versions of events and forgetting what really happened. 
 
 By lying on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, users may ‘rewrite’ their memories. Nearly half of respondents claimed to feel paranoia, sadness and shame as a result of not being able to live up to their online image. 
 
 Revelation: Almost two-thirds of social-media users lie to ‘airbrush reality’ and make their lives seem more interesting than they are, according to a revealing new survey 
 
 Our habit of showing off on social media is resulting in a dangerous erosion of our personal identity, according to Dr Richard Sherry, clinical psychologist and founding member of the Society for Neuropsychoanalysis. He says: ‘Our need to document and share our lives is part of our nature and beneficial – but the strengths and drawbacks of social media need to be understood better by society. 
 
 ‘Recent studies show that memories are actually modified and less accurate whenever we “retrieve” them from our minds, to the point of entirely changing their nature over time. Being competitive is normal. However, the dark side of this social conformity is when we negate what authentically feels to be “us” to the degree that we no longer recognise the experience, our voice, the memory or the view of ourselves. 
 
 ‘When this starts to happen, feelings of guilt and distaste towards ourselves can create psychological problems, including anxiety. This can exacerbate certain personality traits which can become unhelpful, if not outright destructive.’ 
 
 Danger: The findings have led psychologists to warn that some may succumb to ‘digital amnesia’, believing their own versions of events and forgetting what really happened 
 
 The new survey, commissioned by social networking site Pencourage, found that 68 per cent ‘embellish, exaggerate or outright lie when documenting events on social media’. 
 
 One in ten admit their subsequent recollections of the events they wrote about have already been distorted. The youngest are at most risk, with 16 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds admitting their memories have ‘absolutely’ been compromised. 
 
 A previous Pencourage survey showed the most common issues people lied about were what they were doing at the time, such as pretending they were out when they were home alone, their relationships, holidays and success of their careers. 
 
 Reasons for this included ‘fear of appearing boring’ and jealousy of others’ more exciting posts. 
 
 The only study ever undertaken into the impact of social media on memory was published earlier this year in the Psychonomics Bulletin And Review, and concluded that the use of social networks such as Twitter are unequivocally ‘damaging to autobiographical memory’. 
 
 This has disturbing implications, Dr Sherry says. ‘Many studies have demonstrated that even the simple act of imagining a childhood event increases a person’s confidence that the event happened to them in the past. 
 
 ‘Researchers have demonstrated how readily false memories can form through the simple use of language. Even the phrasing of a narrative can shape how we later remember it.’ 
 
 Pencourage.com is a social networking site where users post anonymously. The site already hosts more than 65,000 diaries. 
 
 Founder Peter Clayton says: ‘If our memories are like hard drives, we’re slowly wiping them through the scattered way we currently document our experiences.
– A new study on psychology research is essentially bashing all other psychology studies. The research area has gotten a bad rap recently thanks to retracted research papers, so psychologists set out to discover what was going on. When research is valid, others should be able to duplicate the study and come up with the same results. But when more than 250 scientists tried to re-create 100 studies from three respected psychology journals—working closely with original researchers—the results matched in just 39 cases. Even among those, 83% were found to have smaller effects than first reported, reports the Verge. The studies covered topics like personality, relationships, learning, and memory, and were the kind trusted by therapists and educators, reports the New York Times. A scientist argues the reproducibility issue could apply across other fields, too. "To see it so clearly, on such a large scale—it's unprecedented," adds another. "There is little known about the reproducibility of research in general," says study author Brian Nosek. "And there has been a growing concern that reproducibility may be lower than expected or desired." He adds that scientific journals tend to focus on new research, so those hoping to get published don't waste time testing older studies. Nosek doesn't consider the results "negative or pessimistic," but he hopes they'll lead to self-correction and replication standards. So are these results reproducible? "Even this project itself is not a final word, a last word, a definitive word about reproducibility," Nosek says.