During the past couple of years, psychological science has been in the midst of a PR disaster. Academics have publicly announced that they failed to replicate some of the most classic findings in our field, bringing the original effects themselves — and often the integrity of the original researchers reporting them — into question. These pronouncements and subsequent push to estimate the true effect sizes of various findings led to the even more disturbing realization that it is far too difficult to publish these failed replications — or successful replications, for that matter — in the peer-reviewed, academic journals that serve as our bread and butter.
A new initiative, backed by the Association for Psychological Science and co-headed by Dr. Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Dr. Alex Holcombe of the University of Sydney, is ripping the dirty laundry that’s been airing in public for the past two years off of the clothesline and finally giving it the good, thorough cleaning that it has so desperately needed. This initiative aims to make rigorous replication a rewarding and beneficial aspect of a productive scientific career by establishing a special section dedicated to publishing replications in one of the top journals in our field, Perspectives on Psychological Science (one of the official journals of the Association for Psychological Science).
Psychologists have been calling for a widespread replication effort for years. However, there are several good reasons why this initiative is the first that truly has the gleaming possibility of revitalizing our field.
PsySociety 