Psychology's Replication Crisis and Clinical Psychological Science

Abstract

Despite psychological scientists' increasing interest in replicability, open science, research transparency, and the improvement of methods and practices, the clinical psychology community has been slow to engage. This has been shifting more recently, and with this review, we hope to facilitate this emerging dialogue. We begin by examining some potential areas of weakness in clinical psychology in terms of methods, practices, and evidentiary base. We then discuss a select overview of solutions, tools, and current concerns of the reform movement from a clinical psychological science perspective. We examine areas of clinical science expertise (e.g., implementation science) that should be leveraged to inform open science and reform efforts. Finally, we reiterate the call to clinical psychologists to increase their efforts toward reform that can further improve the credibility of clinical psychological science.

Keywords: clinical psychology; clinical science; metapsychology; open science; replication crisis; reproducibility.