Very Bad Wizards Episode 115: Which Field is More Fu@%ed: Philosophy or Psychology?
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May 16, 2017 They debate scandals and controversies in philosophy, including a high-profile journal flap about academic norms. They examine psychology's replication crisis, fraud cases, and whether methods can be reformed. They argue about whether either field can make steady, cumulative progress or is stalled by incentives and hype.
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Hypatia Retraction Sparked Fieldwide Debate
- The Hypatia controversy involved associate editors disavowing a peer-reviewed article by Rebecca Tuvel after public outcry.
- Tamler and David describe the event as publishing-through-peer-review then retracting support, which they see as hanging an untenured scholar out to dry.
Philosophy Lacks Agreed Truth Criteria
- Philosophy lacks widely agreed criteria for truth, which undermines progress on its central questions.
- Tamler Sommers argues this causes philosophy to fragment into narrow, technical disputes (e.g., Gettier debates) rather than resolving big questions about meaning or morality.
Narrow Questions Crowd Out Big Ideas
- The lack of agreed standards drives philosophy toward increasingly narrow, obscure problems that seem irrelevant to most people.
- David Pizarro compares this to water flowing into dead-end channels, producing fringe-style work indistinguishable from mainstream philosophy.