The replication crisis devastated psychology. This group is looking to rebuild it.

The replication crisis devastated psychology. This group is looking to rebuild it. 

B. Resnick

In summary: About a decade ago, many scientists realized that their standard research methods were delivering them false, unreliable results.

When many famous and textbook psychological studies were retested with more rigorous methods, many failed. Other results simply looked less impressive upon reinspection. It’s possible around 50 percent of the published psychological literature fails upon retesting, but no one knows precisely the extent of the instability in the foundations of psychological science. The realization provoked a painful period of introspection and revision.

There’s an old model for conducting psychological research: done in small labs, run by one big-name professor, probing the brains of American college undergrads. The incentives built into this model have favored publishing as many papers with positive results as possible (those that show statistically significant results, but not those that turned up bupkis) over rigorous inquiry. This old model has produced a mountain of scientific literature — but a lot of it has failed upon closer inspection.

I had to google for bupkis, not come across that before. But more seriously, there is a bigger picture. It isn't just about non-replicable or non-significant results. There is a whole viewpoint on what it means to be human, the nature of consciousness, which will have been grounded on those results. It almost certainly means not just poor research, but poor understandings too.