Quote:
Originally Posted by prisoner437x3y0
mostly because i am being deliberately inflammatory
did you ever read this earlier in the year?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/sc...says.html?_r=0
everything seems ultimately subjective after the behaviorism stuff i feel like more shifted to neurology
i think psychologists, counselors etc still have high societal value |
I did actually see this, and I could give you an argument for either side.
Yes, publication bias is rampant, and pressure to publish in order to attain tenure leads to questionable claims and even questionable research. And yes, nobody does replication studies because replications and null findings aren't sexy to the editors.
But on the other hand, to look at any one study and expect it to be conclusive is not the way science is done. Science accumulates, and it produces rubble. When we're too close to the rubble, it just looks like piles of rock, but eventually a mountain emerges. A study is only conclusive after decades of research on the topic that corroborates it.
So yes, publications in isolation are producing questionable and problematic results--even honest studies lead to questionable conclusions--but science as a practice, be it a hard science or a "soft" one, is still a valuable enterprise.
The review that was rejected was a systematic review which screened 10,000 papers to arrive at the conclusion: "You would think after 10,000 such studies, there would be positive results if this worked. Either it doesn't work, or we need to change the way we're thinking about it".
It was rejected by the journal for not presenting significant findings.