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Plack said, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ..."

I wish I could be more hopeful, but it seems like a large portion of researchers in fields like psychology are too worried about their prior, poor quality research to embrace change.




Admittedly that quote is a bit of a trigger for me, since I'm an older scientist. Also, "embracing change" is a business dog whistle that is often applied when the change is onerous to the people on whom it's being imposed. Both are technically ad hominem.

A bigger problem may be that the entire body of published knowledge, and even the choice of categories that are the focus of study (such as "personality" and "intelligence") are too numerous and prevalent throughout our entire culture to readily abandon.

The right thing to do if half of your knowledge base is bunk, might be to erase all of it and start over, but that's virtually impossible.




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