Psychology has long had something of a credibility problem when it came to being as scientific as other fields.

While every area of research has problem children, most grow out of it with time. Psychology's problems have been known for well over half a century and only recently have frauds and suspect methodologies started to be called out.

Not that some haven't tried. Writing in The Guardian, Chris Chambers reminds us that in 1959 Ted Sterling reviewed four top psychology journals and found that 97% of published papers claimed statistically significant effects. He likened that publication bias to malpractice.



It didn't get any better. Only recently has there been a demand for more rigor, and that primarily from young researchers who thought they were going to do science and instead found that they were matching data to beliefs. Psychology became the poster child for why the public was losing confidence in science and high-profile names like Satoshi Kanazawa, Marc Hauser and Diederik Stapel all took a fall.

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