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Comment by nonbel | Hacker News Reader

>"people being wildly wildly wrong in good faith"

There is really no excuse for them not trying to replicate each others studies this whole time to the point it was allowed to build into a crisis. That is a very old and well known part of the scientific method. So maybe they were somehow so ignorant of science that it was "good faith", which doesn't sound any better than doing it on purpose to me.

And psychology is hardly the only area of research, or even the worst, when it comes to this. Eg, medical research seems to be worse.

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>There is really no excuse for them not trying to replicate each others studies this whole time

I think that this statement fails to account for the incentives for researchers: what kind of things they get success, praise, and support for doing. Despite their importance to the scientific project of any field, replicating experiments and publishing negative results are not rewarded the way that new studies with positive results are.

I was in academia dealing with the same stuff. I worked constantly for years to save my project once I figured out what was going on. I got it to the point where at least it wasn't BS, but after that was too burned out to go further. At every step there were social (not scientific) obstacles to me doing a good job.

After completing the degree, I quit rather than produce fake science or spend my time trying to fight against those who are. I have been there, and have no pity for people who choose to produce fake science.

Does any science spend any special amount of effort replicating previous studies? Unless the prior study is extraordinary, anyway.

It took nearly 50 years for Piltdown Man to be exposed, likely because it told scientists what they wanted to hear.

Sure, in some areas of physics they reproduce studies millions or billions of times by figuring out how to get it done cheaper and cheaper until students can do it:

https://hepweb.ucsd.edu/2dl/pasco/Millikans%20Oil%20Drop%20M...

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