Work

Severity and Crises in Science: Are We Getting It Right When We're Right and Wrong When We're Wrong?

Year: 2022

Type: preprint

Abstract: Just as teachers give students exams to assess their mastery of a subject, researchers submit their theories to empirical tests. And just as a high score on a test by itself is not sufficient to believe in the student’s mastery of a subject, researchers need severe tests to make reliable inferences from observations to theories. In this paper, we provide an explication of the concept of severity, and how it underlies three current methodological crises in psychology: the theory crisis, the measurement crisis, and the generalizability crisis. Our detailed account reinforces the importance of designing tests that can prove yourself wrong, and should assist empirical researchers in evaluating the severity of their own tests.

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/ekhc8

Authors: Aline Claesen, Daniel Lakens, wolf vanpaemel, Noah N'Djaye Nikolai van Dongen

Institutions: KU Leuven, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Amsterdam

Language: English

Topic: Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology

Subfield: General Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, KU Leuven, Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds UGent

Awards: G3449695334, G5653589078, Increasing the Reliability and Efficiency of Psychological Science, G7465361655

OpenAlex ID: W4294385216

Cites: 40

Cited by: 4

Related to: 10