The ongoing methodological crisis in psychology and other sciences where many published research findings cannot be reproduced when the same studies are repeated by independent researchers. This crisis has raised serious questions about the reliability of scientific knowledge.
The term emerged in the 2010s, combining 'replication' (from Latin 'replicare' meaning 'to fold back') with 'crisis' (from Greek 'krisis' meaning 'decision point'). It gained prominence after large-scale replication projects found that many classic psychology studies could not be reproduced.
The Reproducibility Project found that only 36% of psychology studies could be successfully replicated, and even successful replications often had much smaller effects than the original studies! This crisis revealed that psychology's 'file drawer problem' - where negative results never get published - combined with pressure to find significant results had created a literature full of false positives.
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