Raising Awareness for the Replication Crisis in Clinical Psychology by Focusing on Inconsistencies in Psychotherapy Research: How Much Can We Rely on Published Findings from Efficacy Trials?

Frontiers in Psychology

Michael P. Hengartner¹ 

关键词: replication;    clinical psychology;    psychotherapy research;    publication bias;    allegiance;    efficacy;    effectiveness;    methodology;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00256

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The replication crisis addresses a fundamental problem in psychological research. Reported associations are systematically inflated and many published results do not replicate, suggesting that the scientific psychological literature is replete with false-positive findings (Pashler and Harris, 2012; Yong, 2012; Aarts et al., 2015). Unfortunately, the replication crisis remained almost unanswered in clinical psychology until very recently. Leichsenring et al. (2017) and Tackett et al. (2017) are to be complimented on their comprehensive recommendations for clinical science replicability, as these two contributions were the first to address this important topic with respect to clinical psychology. Their arguments are persuasive and elaborate, but some controversial topics not detailed by these authors need to be addressed in order to provide a critical appraisal of our most heeded research findings. Therefore, in order to raise awareness for the replication crisis in clinical psychology, I will outline some specific issues underscoring that inconsistent and systematically biased research findings persistently compromise the yield of clinical research. For it I will elaborate on the efficacy of psychotherapy, which arguably is the most cited research topic within clinical psychology.

【 授权许可】

CC BY