Rick makes some pertinent comments in response to my remarks on the publicising in the press of unreplicated findings in psychology, concluding:
>So, instead of looking to the press for the importance of replication >in science, we should look to the number of reference citations >eventually given to a new work. If a phenomenon can't be replicated, >it isn't going to have much impact on science (although it may have >an impact on the popular understanding of science as disseminated >by the media). Perhaps almost as important is the knowledge acquired by College teachers of psychology (and authors of College psychology texts!), who are scarcely in a position to keep up with every significant publication among the wide range of topics they deal with. They could hardly fail to be ignorant of the widely publicised Anderson and Green (2001) claims (which were published in Nature, in which issue there was also an article proclaiming the findings by the memory researcher Martin Conway whose introductory remarks on Freud's supposed findings with his patients were extraordinarily credulous). But how many know of the failure to replicate the Anderson findings by Bulevich et al (2006)? >If a phenomenon can't be replicated, >it isn't going to have much impact on science But it might be accepted by some clinical psychologists (not to mention psychotherapists) who, e.g, could possibly regard the Anderson et al findings as vindication of their continuing to actively search for repressed memories of early childhood sexual abuse. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [email protected] http://www.esterson.org ------------------------------------------ From: Rick Froman <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Re:Stapel's faking of social psychology data Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 21:09:43 -0600 Allen has provided one more helpful example of replication (even a published lack of replication) in psychological science with the Bulevich et al (2006) study. What seems to be being confounded here is the scientific evaluation of an original finding as opposed to what appears in the popular press. I don't think we can count on the popular press to wait for replication. News is called news because it is new so the first time a particular finding occurs will be when it is news whereas scientists will wait for replication. I do realize that individual scientists don't help much with the press releases they issue on their findings. However, other scientists, who may not be so credulous on scientific topics as the press, are still likely to replicate, if only to build on the new finding. If it isn't replicable, there won't be much follow-up on it in the scientific literature (even if failures to replicate aren't published). So, instead of looking to the press for the importance of replication in science, we should look to the number of reference citations eventually given to a new work. If a phenomenon can't be replicated, it isn't going to have much impact on science (although it may have an impact on the popular understanding of science as disseminated by the media). Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences John Brown University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=13947 or send a blank email to leave-13947-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
