> What would happen if you turned in some psych work that was robust in its method, but without explicit references to theory?

It would get rejected. I actually replicated a really interesting negative finding (around optimism and health) multiple times with a good design, and couldn't get it published as I didn't have an explanation for why this happened (i do now, but have been in the private sector for well over a decade at this point).

> it deference to some preferred school of thought that needs to sign off on your work, or is it more that you need to signal that you know lots of theory?

Always seemed like physics envy to me at least.