Scott defends psychology against broad dismissals by showing that the replication crisis primarily affected only social priming within social psychology, while the vast majority of the field consists of solid, replicable research across many subdisciplines.
Longer summary
Scott Alexander argues that the replication crisis has unfairly tarnished the entire field of psychology when it primarily affected only social psychology, and more specifically social priming research. He demonstrates this by walking through a standard intro psychology textbook, showing that 15 out of 16 chapters cover solid research areas like psychophysics, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and clinical psychology, while only one chapter deals with the problematic social psychology subfield. He provides a long list of the diverse types of psychologists doing legitimate work, from those studying visual processing to those treating drug abuse, and emphasizes that bad research exists in all scientific fields, not just psychology. The post concludes by urging critics to be specific and target social priming rather than dismissing psychology as a whole.
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