WS MoreOrLess: How Reliable is Psychology Science?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2015
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How reliable is psychology science? The Reproducibility of Psychological Science project reported recently and it made grim reading. Having replicated 100 psychological studies published in three psychology journals only thirty six had significant results compared to 97% first time around. So is there a problem with psychological science and what should be done to fix it. Decimate Tim used the word in an interview last week to mean devastate rather than cut by ten percent – many listeners said this was unforgivable – was it? – We ask Oliver Kamm - Author of 'Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage'.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the short edition of More or Less. |
| 0:02.0 | First broadcast on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:08.0 | The details of our complete range of podcasts |
| 0:11.0 | and our terms of use go to BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts. |
| 0:18.0 | Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:22.0 | We're your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life, |
| 0:25.0 | and I'm Tim Halford. |
| 0:28.0 | First, a few weeks ago, the world of psychology was shaken |
| 0:32.0 | by the findings of something called the Reproducibility Project. |
| 0:36.0 | The project, led by the psychologist Brian Nozek of the Centre for Open Science, |
| 0:40.0 | coordinated 270 researchers in an effort to go back and check |
| 0:45.0 | almost 100 studies that had been published in three leading psychology journals. |
| 0:50.0 | The Reproducibility Project team found that only 39 of these replication attempts |
| 0:55.0 | were able to confirm the original findings in the opinion of the team. |
| 0:59.0 | 36% found statistically significant results, |
| 1:03.0 | and the effect sizes in the replications were half as big as those in the originals. |
| 1:07.0 | So overall, the Reproducibility Project would seem to suggest |
| 1:11.0 | that if you read about a study in a highly regarded psychology journal, |
| 1:15.0 | the chances are that that study will not be repeatable. |
| 1:19.0 | So what should we make of all this? |
| 1:21.0 | He talked to several researchers starting with Gavin Sullivan of Coventry University in the UK. |
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