> Papers that report boring or common-sense results seem to be true very often. Cognitive psychology (e.g. memory and perception) mostly held up.
> ...it turns out for most people "if the claim of the paper doesn't make intuitive sense, the paper is wrong" is a good shortcut that works about 70% of the time.
Generally, the closer to the "metal" (e.g., memory, perception, learning) and the more pedestrian the psychological finding is, the likelier it is to hold good.
I might be giving in to a bit of hindsight bias here, but I have come across this in the psychology of learning myself. It has been a bit underwhelming I must admit. "Good sleep, retrieval practice, elaboration, paying attention, meaningfulness and organization, and spaced repetition result in better learning; massed-practice is not very useful for long-term retention". Well, no kidding!