Vance is entirely correct. But it is perhaps even worse in the Psychology world, where many of the seminal, grounding studies such as the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgram shock experiments have been revealed as total scientific frauds. Many, if not most of the important grounding experiments in Psychology simply can’t be reproduced. 🤨
Yet this is basic Psych 101 fodder. And I have taught Psych 101 several times and talked about those studies as if they were true! Boy, am I feeling betrayed…
So yes, biology has some rather gruesome violations of scientific method. Fraud. But they are not the only ones. Maybe not even the worst ones in some ways.
Here’s what Grok says:
Biology does face reproducibility challenges, with studies showing replication rates as low as 10-40% in areas like cancer research. A 2016 Nature survey found 77% of biologists failed to replicate others’ experiments, higher than in physics or medicine. Publication bias, complex systems, and low statistical power contribute…
And while Grok really doesn’t want to call it “fraud,” and works hard to make it seem innocent enough, it says “it”fraud in Psychology” in a nice way and admits that there is a “reproducibility crisis:”
… psychology’s seminal studies do face a reproducibility crisis… In psychology, this issue has been particularly evident with influential studies like the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s obedience study, which have faced challenges in replication due to methodological flaws and other concerns.Â
In short, those studies are total BS…