Replication crisis – Just Another Instance of the Replication of Crises in Psychology? Historical Retrospections and Theoretical-Psychological Assessments

Abstract

The current dismay within the mainstream of nomological psychology may result from the fact that the anomaly of non-replicability has a direct bearing on its very own methodological requirements and quality criteria of empirical research. The call for more scientific rigour on the customary avenue in order to secure unambiguous empirical findings gives, however, rise to suspect that the deeper reason for this anomaly is not yet recognised: namely, the misguided regulation of a strictly objective inquiry, distorting what is present and relevant in everyday life and treating the ‘subjective’ of the subject matter as the central root of interfering factors which have to be eliminated or neutralised in the pursuit of experimental hypothesis testing. The problems of replicability would thus be a proof once again that the notorious inversion between matter and method does not really work, due to the uncircumventable characteristics of human inter-/subjectivity. In this sense, the replication crisis replicates the perennial topic of all historical discussions about a crisis in psychology – the failure of a ‘psychology without subject’.