Engaging in what has been dubbed Questionable Research Practices has been the norm in psychological research for decades. In this post a researcher in Experimental Psychopathology, who was trained in the era before the replication crisis started, describes why and how she adopted new research practices.
Dr Derksen engages with Roy Baumeister’s dismissal of failed replications as resulting from a lack of “flair.” The problem, he says, is not that Baumeister takes this seriously. Rather, it’s that he doesn’t take it seriously enough.
We all know that we test theories by subjecting them to experimental test, allowing us to potentially falsify hypotheses. But where do theories come from? A realist philosophy of science, and the method of retroduction, allows us to use empirical evidence, even from “failed” experiments, to generate as well as test theory.