Washington — The annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, held here over the Memorial Day weekend, presented plenty of worry for those concerned over the field’s recent, high-profile troubles with replication, data quality, and fraud.
There was the half-day session on “Building a Better Psychological Science,” which featured several scientists who have raised alarms about the field in the past two years, including Daniel Kahneman, a professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, and Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. And for the truly self-flagellating, Scott Lilienfeld, of Emory University, had the talk for you: “Why Many Laypersons and Politicians Don’t View Our Field as Scientific,” its subtitle went.
Perhaps it was because of this doubtful swirl, or because of the…