Scientists and Human Behaviour:

[beecee]

https://phys.org/news/2021-11-social-scientists-replication-capable-beliefs.html

Testing social scientists with replication studies shows them capable of changing their beliefs:

A team of researchers from the University of Alabama, the University of Melbourne and the University of California has found that social scientists are able to change their beliefs regarding the outcome of an experiment when given the chance. In a paper published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the group describes how they tested the ability of scientists to change their beliefs about a scientific idea when shown evidence of replicability. Michael Gordon and Thomas Pfeifer with Massey University have published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue explaining why scientists must be able to update their beliefs.

more at link...........

 

the paper:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01220-7

Psychologists update their beliefs about effect sizes after replication studies

 

Abstract:

Self-correction—a key feature distinguishing science from pseudoscience—requires that scientists update their beliefs in light of new evidence. However, people are often reluctant to change their beliefs. We examined belief updating in action by tracking research psychologists’ beliefs in psychological effects before and after the completion of four large-scale replication projects. We found that psychologists did update their beliefs; they updated as much as they predicted they would, but not as much as our Bayesian model suggests they should if they trust the results. We found no evidence that psychologists became more critical of replications when it would have preserved their pre-existing beliefs. We also found no evidence that personal investment or lack of expertise discouraged belief updating, but people higher on intellectual humility updated their beliefs slightly more. Overall, our results suggest that replication studies can contribute to self-correction within psychology, but psychologists may underweight their evidentiary value.