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Can the Behavioral Sciences Self-Correct? A Social Epistemic Study

Romero Toro,Felipe
Abstract
Advocates of the self-corrective thesis argue that scientific method will refute false theories and find closer approximations to the truth in the long run. I discuss a contemporary interpretation of this thesis in terms of frequentist statistics in the context of the behavioral sciences. I show how long-run correction of error depends on the interaction between statistical inference methods and social conditions that affect every experiment: availability of resources (economic), experimenter biases (psychological), and accepted norms of publication (social norms). I argue that this interaction explains the "replicability crisis" in social psychology better than purely methodological explanations.
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2016
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Tilburg University Research Output Collection
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Romero Toro, F 2016, 'Can the Behavioral Sciences Self-Correct? A Social Epistemic Study', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science: Part A , vol. 60, pp. 55. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2016.10.002
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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14602/67620
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