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One of the late chapters in David Spiegelhalter’s fine volume, “The Art of Statistics,” focuses on the problems and reproducibility crisis in psychology research.
This sentence gave me a bit of a startle: “In a 2012 survey of 2,155 US academic psychologists, just 2% admitted to falsifying data.” The part that gave me a gasp was the phrase, “just 2%” as if that was a small figure. I’m not surprised that 2% have falsified data; I’m surprised that that many would admit to it! Indeed, I feel sure (though am only guessing) that the majority who have done it would NOT admit to it, and that the true figure is therefore probably at least double the 2% given — that would be at least 4% who haven’t just made mistakes, or fudged a little, or spun their conclusions, but outright falsified data!
I don’t know how many total academic psychologists there are, but depending where they are and how much they publish, 2 - 4+% represents a pretty serious problem in my mind. And while psychology is probably especially vulnerable to such falsification this doesn’t even address how much may additionally go on in biological, medical, and physical science fields. Spiegelhalter goes on to note that 94% of those in the study admitted committing at least one of 10 "questionable research practices" looked at. Of course there are many reasons for such a state of affairs, but ultimately none very defensible. The award-winning site "Retraction Watch" has been tracking, for years now, published scientific papers that are retracted due to various issues, including fraud -- and they never seem to run out of material! :(( (definitely a site worth following and supporting if you're not already).
I was a psychology major myself 45 years ago and complained, to deaf ears, about the sloppiness of the field, but sloppiness and fraud are almost separate issues. Still, glad to see it all attracting more attention these days.
The study Spiegelhalter cites is here (with a lot more details):
I don’t know how many total academic psychologists there are, but depending where they are and how much they publish, 2 - 4+% represents a pretty serious problem in my mind. And while psychology is probably especially vulnerable to such falsification this doesn’t even address how much may additionally go on in biological, medical, and physical science fields. Spiegelhalter goes on to note that 94% of those in the study admitted committing at least one of 10 "questionable research practices" looked at. Of course there are many reasons for such a state of affairs, but ultimately none very defensible. The award-winning site "Retraction Watch" has been tracking, for years now, published scientific papers that are retracted due to various issues, including fraud -- and they never seem to run out of material! :(( (definitely a site worth following and supporting if you're not already).
I was a psychology major myself 45 years ago and complained, to deaf ears, about the sloppiness of the field, but sloppiness and fraud are almost separate issues. Still, glad to see it all attracting more attention these days.
The study Spiegelhalter cites is here (with a lot more details):
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