Nobel prize-winner Daniel Kahneman - a laureate in economics but a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, has thrown the gauntlet down to one group of psychologists to restore the credibility of their field - by creating a replication ring to check each others’ results. Kahneman is a pioneer in behavioral economics, the irrational ways we make decisions about risk. If you like "Freakanomics", thank Kahneman.

While he is talking to researchers who use social priming in his general email to all psychologists, the study of how subtle cues can unconsciously influence our thoughts or behavior, he could be talking to most of the field, which has increasingly been overrun by statisticians compiling surveys of psychology undergraduates and calling it science - or claims of implicit association to find bias, and other questionable ideas.

Increased skepticism about psychology has been fed by failed attempts to replicate classic priming studies, increasing concerns about replicability in psychology more broadly and the exposure of fraudulent social psychologists such as Diederik Stapel, Dirk Smeesters and Lawrence Sanna, who used priming techniques in their work.

Ed Yong writing at Scientific American has the details.

Psychology Receives Challenge to Clean Up Its Act by Ed Yong, Scientific American