BMC Psychol. 2013 Feb 27;1(1):2. doi: 10.1186/2050-7283-1-2. eCollection 2013.
BMC psychology
Keith R Laws
PMID: 25566354 PMCID: PMC4269995 DOI: 10.1186/2050-7283-1-2
Psychology has been historically plagued by the under-reporting of both replications and null findings. The avoidance of these core ingredients of scientific practice means that the psychology literature is unquestionably distorted. The bias in psychology is pervasive and systemic, afflicting researchers, reviewers, editors and journals, all of whom are wed to pursuing the novel and the curious at the expense of the reliable. Psychology therefore operates in a manner that is askew of other sciences, with the links between replicability and believability seemingly much weaker. Additional problems follow from the distorted way that psychology currently operates - including spinning findings, publication bias, and sadly, outright fraud. Such problems represent a serious challenge for psychologists to get their house-in-order - and one step is to make sure that replications and null findings find a home in psychology rather than remain our dirty little secrets that further eat away at the credibility of our science.
