Improving Social Science: Lessons from the Open Science Movement

Improving Social Science: Lessons from the Open Science Movement

By Per Engzell, University of Oxford and Stockholm University and Julia M. Rohrer, Max Planck Institute for Human Development and University of Leipzig

Recent years have been times of turmoil for psychological science. Depending on whom you ask, the field underwent a “replication crisis” (Shrout and Rodgers 2018) or a “credibility revolution” (Vazire 2018) that might even climax in “psychology’s renaissance” (Nelson, Simmons, and Simonsohn 2018). This article asks what social scientists can learn from this story. Our take-home message is that although differences in research practices make it difficult to prescribe cures across disciplines, much still can be learned from interdisciplinary exchange. We provide nine lessons but first summarize psychology’s experience and what sets it apart from neighboring disciplines.