The replication crisis and philosophy

Abstract

The replication crisis is perceived by many as one of the most significant threats to the reliability of research. Though reporting of the crisis has emphasized social science, all signs indicate that it extends to many other fields. This paper investigates the possibility that the crisis and related challenges to conducting research also extend to philosophy. According to one possibility, philosophy inherits a crisis similar to the one in science because philosophers rely on unreplicated or unreplicable findings from science when conducting philosophical research. According to another possibility, the crisis likely extends to philosophy because philosophers engage in similar research practices and face similar structural issues when conducting research that have been implicated by the crisis in science. Proposals for improving philosophical research are offered in light of these possibilities.

A systematic review of null hypothesis significance testing, sample sizes, and statistical power in research using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure

“…It would be too easy to dismiss the Replication Crisis as specific to Social and Personality psychology when other fields employ similar research practices. Over time, recognition of these issues has spread to other areas of psychology (e.g., clinical psychology: Tackett et al, 2019) as well as a diverse range of other fields including cancer biology, economics, methodology, sociology, and philosophy (Baker & Dolgin, 2017;Boulesteix et al, 2020;Buckwalter, 2022;Gordon et al, 2020;Page et al, 2021).…”