Beyond ethics: the crisis of replicability and the theoretical status of social psychology
Mauro Giacomantonio (University “La Sapienza”, Rome)
The replicability crisis, emerged within Social Psychology 10 years ago following the publication of Bem’s work on precognition and Stapel’s case of scientific fraud, raised important questions about the way research was conducted, and in particular, about ethical issues. It was noted that research practices, such as study planning, data collection and analysis, were placed in a “gray” area where the degrees of freedom of the researcher were used in an equivocal or frankly unacceptable fashion. The Open Science movement has promoted a radical change both in the practices of transparency and in the implementation of systematic replication of previous studies These efforts, while fundamental to ensure the development of the discipline, remain a partial effort in the attempt to understand the issues that have emerged in the discipline. In other words, the ethical-methodological solution relating to the crisis of replicability should be accompanied by a deeper analysis of the theoretical and epistemological status of the field. In particular we advocate the necessity to acknowledge that, under many angles, psychology is in a “pre-paradigmatic” phase which clashes with a radical positivism that so far characterizes the approach proposed by the open science movement.
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