[From the article “Psychology Itself Is Under Scrutiny” by Benedict Carey, published in the NY Times] 

“The urge to pull down statues extends well beyond the public squares of nations in turmoil. Lately it has been stirring the air in some corners of science, particularly psychology.”

“…since 2011, the psychology field has been giving itself an intensive background check, redoing more than 100 well-known studies. Often the original results cannot be reproduced, and the entire contentious process has been colored, inevitably, by generational change and charges of patriarchy.”

…

“Still, the study of human behavior will never be as clean as physics or cardiology — how could it be? — and psychology’s elaborate simulations are just that. At the same time, its findings are far more accessible and personally relevant to the public than those in most other scientific fields.”

“Psychology has millions of amateur theorists who test the findings against their own experience. The public’s judgments matter to the field, too.”

“It is one thing to frisk the studies appearing almost daily in journals that form the current back-and-forth of behavior research. It is somewhat different to call out experiments that became classics — and world-famous outside of psychology — because they dramatized something people recognized in themselves and in others.”

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