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As someone in this field somewhat close to the article in a certain sense, I wouldn't say Susan Fiske's attitudes are typical of psychology. Maybe not rare, but not typical either. Her comments have been very controversial to say the least, and many are disturbed by them. Moreover, if you level that statement against psychology, I'm afraid you have to level it against medicine as well, given that there have been similar sentiments expressed in major medical journals as well recently.

Also, without meaning to defend Fiske, her comments here are taken out of context somewhat. Her reference to "methodological terrorism" (from what I have heard through the grapevine) is more, or at least in part, about the trend toward having scientific debates outside of the peer review process, in social media. So my guess is that she might say that part of what she objects to about Statcheck is that it crawls through the papers, labels an error, and then we end up discussing it on HN rather than through peer review. What if Statcheck made an error, which it does sometimes? I don't agree with it, but I think the position I'm describing (which I think is her point in part) isn't unreasonable either. That is, it's not the checking of stats, it's the chaos and disintegration of the peer review system, and "extrascientific" discourse that's happening in science today, if you define "extrascientific" as "outside of peer reviewed journals," where your critics are attacking you on twitter, forums, and facebook, more so than in professional published outlets in a sort of mob.

Again, I do not share her perspective at all (I'm in favor of a shift away from journals) but I do think here her original point was twisted a bit.



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