i started my journey in psychology in 2012 as a college freshman, about a year after daryl bem’s infamous 2011 esp paper had been published in jpsp. the implications of this work to everyone already in the field quickly became evident. responses have included attempts to replicate seminal psychology research in 2015 & 2018, pushes for preregistration, & a general re-evaluation of the ways we conduct science. i didn’t know it at the time, but the implications of this work would shape, in large part, the kind of researcher i’d want to be, too.
i came into this field with a wonderful naiveté largely explained by my being a bright-eyed & bushy-tailed first-year college student — ready to change the world as a self-proclaimed “sponge of knowledge.” so when i sat in the 300-person hall on day 1 of intro to psychology, it made sense to me that science is & always should be tentative. why wouldn’t it be? science is basically the foundation of knowledge. how is one supposed to soak up new knowledge if not by being open to revising previously-held beliefs? how is science supposed to provide that knowledge reliably & validly if not by being tentative?
but us sponges enrolled in intro to psychology would soon learn that it’s incredibly easy to sit on the island of previously-held beliefs when there’s nothing pointing you to the boat that’s been sitting behind the dock this whole time. & as a field we sat on the island of our research practices until the s.s. bem came along & showed us that there was a vast ocean ahead — better ways of doing science. years later, this realization has importantly shaped what i & other researchers strive to do when we conduct science.
science is self-correcting, but only when we’re honest with ourselves & the ways we conduct it. integrity in the foundation of knowledge impacts all of us. it requires us to remind ourselves continuously that we could be wrong — about our methods, about our findings, etc., & that’s okay, so long as we’re willing to revise our work & beliefs.
our work doesn’t have to change the world. but it can if we’re honest with ourselves & appreciate the tentativeness of science.
i think we’d even agree that’s what keeps science interesting.
tentative science 