Psychology in my view needs a theoritical approach. Did Freud, William James etc need to do experiments with 30 graduate students to study about the working of the mind, and behaviour of people?.
There is value in approaching problems analytically rather than resorting to empirical methods.
> theories can be valuable in themselves
Maybe they can be (in pure mathematics, or philosophy, as the sibling comment points out), but not if your end-goal is to apply your theory or its predictions in the real world. Then suddenly the soundest and most coherent of theories can fall apart.
> There is value in approaching problems analytically rather than resorting to empirical methods.
Sure, but whether your arrive at your predictions analytically or empirically it does not preclude you from testing them experimentally.
Specifically what it means is that the current binary system for describing significance is built precisely in such a way that even in the case of true effects, the probability that two studies would disagree could be as high as 50%. Therefore we need better metrics to describe the evidence. What it does NOT mean, is that all the research conducted is sham and worthless.
Specifically, if one study finds p=0.045 and another finds p=0.055, then the two studies will be in conflict (i.e. failure to replicate). But to use those pvalues to then claim "there is no evidence of an effect" shows a misunderstanding of the whole process, since a pvalue of 0.055 is actually pretty good evidence (just not as good as our arbitrary threshold).
Popularisation of the term "replication crisis" as a term is part of the problem if you ask me. It points the finger completely in the wrong direction.