Psychology’s False Discovery Rate ~18%

Updated: 2026.04.07 11D ago 12 sources
Analyzing 487,996 statistical tests from 35,515 papers (1975–2017), the study finds substantial publication bias and p‑hacking and persistently low power, yet estimates only about 17.7% of reported significant results are false under stated assumptions. Power improved only slightly over four decades and meets 80% only for large effects. — This tempers replication‑crisis nihilism while underscoring the need for power, preregistration, and bias controls, shaping how media, funders, and policymakers treat psychology evidence.

Sources

Should We Trust Social Science Research?
Steve Stewart-Williams 2026.04.07 85% relevant
The Tyner et al. replication project provides broad empirical confirmation that many published social‑science findings fail to replicate and that effect sizes shrink on replication; this reinforces the existing claim that psychology and related fields suffer substantial false‑discovery rates and unreliable literature that should be treated with caution in policy and public debate.
~75% of Psychology Claims are False - by Lee Jussim
2026.04.04 72% relevant
Jussim’s ~75% estimate directly challenges the existing claim that psychology’s false discovery rate is around 18%; the article provides a higher, contrarian upper‑bound built from replication run‑rates (~50%) plus additional error channels (overclaiming, citation of unreproducible work, censorship, fabrication), making it a substantive contestation of that prior figure.
The Ten Warning Signs - by Ted Gioia - The Honest Broker
2026.04.04 81% relevant
Gioia foregrounds replication failure (citing ~40% failure) as his first proof point for systemic breakdown; this maps directly onto existing concerns about high false‑discovery/replication rates in social science and biomedical literature and amplifies that technical problem into a broader public‑trust narrative.
Psychology’s Greatest Hits (Part 3/3)
Josh Zlatkus 2026.03.11 78% relevant
The article highlights the contrast between 'hard' and 'soft' psychology and warns that vague, unfalsifiable claims in social/clinical areas produce unreliable results — a direct thematic match to discussions of high false‑discovery rates in psychology and the replication crisis.
Psychology’s Biggest Misses—Honorable Mentions
The Living Fossils 2026.03.11 75% relevant
By listing multiple canonical claims (priming, birth‑order, EQ, self‑esteem causation) as likely false or weak, the article exemplifies the broader pattern that psychology has a substantial false‑positive rate and many high‑profile claims overstate effects.
The Collapse of Ego Depletion - by Michael Inzlicht
2026.03.05 85% relevant
Inzlicht uses the ego‑depletion saga—original claims, failed replications, and continuing defenses by originators (Roy Baumeister)—as a concrete case of psychology producing high false‑positive rates and unreliable effects, directly illustrating the broader claim that many published findings in the field overstate truth.
Political Psychology Links, 1/12/2026
Arnold Kling 2026.01.12 88% relevant
The article cites Josh Zlatkus and Rob Kurzban on replication failures and explicitly frames psychology as operating near the boundary of 'science and baloney sandwich,' directly matching the registered idea that psychology shows systemic publication bias, low power, and a substantial false‑discovery problem.
“Focus like a laser on merit!”
Lee Jussim 2026.01.10 75% relevant
The discussion of how academics and laypeople badly predict meta‑analytic outcomes and how the IAT is routinely misinterpreted ties directly to broader replication‑quality concerns summarized by the false‑discovery work—showing why psychology/social science credibility metrics are central to public debates.
Psychology’s Greatest Misses (Part 1/3)
Josh Zlatkus 2026.01.07 92% relevant
The article argues that many psychological findings are not true science but artifacts of poor methods; that diagnosis matches the existing calculation that a substantial share of reported significant results in psychology are likely false positives, directly connecting to claims about low replication and publication bias.
Nine Fascinating Findings from Personality Science
Steve Stewart-Williams 2025.11.29 70% relevant
The article relies on large syntheses and meta‑analytic results (e.g., Zell & Lesick on conscientiousness, Ferretti et al. comparing Big Five vs MBTI) and thus provides an example of psychology producing robust, replicable findings rather than one‑off claims; this connects to the existing idea about the replication and false‑discovery profile of psychology by showing where effects are reliable and policy‑relevant.
Are most published research findings false? Trends in statistical power, publication selection bias, and the false discovery rate in psychology (1975–2017) - PMC
2025.10.07 100% relevant
Estimate: 'The share of false discoveries among all significant results was 17.7%' from a corpus of 35,515 psychology papers (1975–2017).
PSYCHOLOGY. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science - PubMed
2015.10.07 78% relevant
The Open Science Collaboration’s 2015 mass replication (e.g., ~36% significant replications, effect sizes roughly halved) paved the way for later meta‑audits that estimate psychology’s false‑positive share (~17.7%). The OSC paper is the empirical foundation that triggered these field‑level quantifications.
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