A Dean Told Me She’d Rather Not Tenure Social Psychologists

I wish I could stop writing about replicability in psychology. I really do.

That would mean our issues would be more or less settled, and I could continue to conduct normal science. But recently I had a set of experiences that made it clear that our issues are not settled. A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at The Ohio State University, and the question period and private discussions after gave me whiplash.

I delivered my talk at Ohio State’s new Chase Center for Civics, one of these new conservative-leaning civics centers popping up across American campuses. The political bent of the audience is an important detail here. I talked about my lab’s work on moralization, mostly an analysis of news headlines and polling of Americans on their views. The details are unimportant, save to say the research was mostly descriptive, and we’ve replicated parts of it already.

One of the first questions came from Hollis Robbins, a very impressive professor of English at the University of Utah, who also served as a dean at various universities for nearly a decade. Her question was direct: “Why should I trust anything you say?” At first, I was taken aback, uncertain how to respond to a brilliant woman doubting the results of basic polling. But then she mentioned the new Nature replication paper, which showed that attempts to replicate basic social science findings succeeded only about half the time—a paper I know well, as I am one of its (many) authors. She was wondering why she should trust anything I say because I work in a field that’s generally unreplicable. I suspect many conservatives feel the same way. And honestly, after the past few weeks, I’m starting to think they have a point.

I’m writing this angry. In the past two weeks alone, I’ve watched senior colleagues, in private but also in print and on social media, treat the past decade of methods reforms as a sort of overreaction. It’s 2026, but the past weeks have given me flashbacks to 2016’s greatest hits: accusations that replications were poorly executed, failed replications blamed on hidden moderators, social media drama that construes a defense of criticism as a defense of bullying.

I’m fucking angry.

Angry enough to name names. Paid subscribers get the rest.