In order for university professors to keep their jobs and get tenure they have to “publish.” This does not mean that they write an article for the New York Times about their work or write an op ed column in the New York Post complaining that the world does not recognize their genius. Their articles have to be published “professional” journals, journals that are thick with articles about the specialty to which the journal is dedicated.

Thus we have the journal of experimental psychology, the journal of cardiology and here and there a satirical journal which never lasted more than a month or two.

The problem with this system is that the journals can have their own standards as to what they publish the economic future of the people who submit articles depends on those articles being accepted. This way science can be perverted most journals only accept empirical research and es hue theoretical articles. since the research has to be positive in its outcome and since the methodology has to follow certain rigid rules, a lot of blind alleys can develop. Also there is cheating where the researcher fudges the data or makes it up from his own imagination. To get an idea of how the system works, it is very difficult to publish research to show that an idea tentatively accepted is wrong. The replication studies are ignored because they don’t produce positive results. the journal also controls what research is published by selecting topics which its editors appreciate and rejecting articles about subjects which the editors do not care about.

Not surprisingly there are quantum bursts of research about some study which are never followed by failed attempts to replicate these studies. Then the whole topic disappears from view as it is replaced by the next quantum wave of some other quite different study.

The results of the research are complicated by the statistics used to analyze the data. First of all, flagging a statistical result as consequential (“significant”) is usually a process to show that a particular relationship is unlikely to be the result of chance. The great majority of psychological research follows this assumption. The problem is that not being due to chance tells us little about a relationship. Things have become very complicated recently with the more and more frequent use of very complicated statistics. These are only usable as computer programs; they cannot be engineered backwards (to test the results) without the program itself. Many such programs are “proprietary”, they belong to someone and cannot be used without permission.

So a mountain of data is often thrown at such a statistical program; it digests the data and throws out results all over the place. This is a great advantage to researchers who have to have some positive results to publish articles or lose their jobs. No matter what the research, there is likely to be an outlier relationship or two which fits somebodies need, even if it is incongruent with all of the other results.

Certainly, steps are being taken to deal with this condition but it is hard to put these steps into effect. Also with so many people making their living gaming the system, there is not that much enthusiasm for change.

There is also a potential for serious embarrassment, some close examinations of the statistics of classical experiments in psychology have found irregularities. Fudging of data, of course, but using fictional data, an absolute no-no which has appeared here and there.