Rethinking Education in Psychology in Light of Reproducibility Crisis

Sanjay Srivastava’s joke syllabus ("A Joke Syllabus With a Serious Point: Cussing Away the Reproducibility Crisis," The Chronicle, August 15) and Lee Jussim's blog post on Psychology Today about educating psychology students in light of the reproducibility crisis led me to reflect on my department’s recent curriculum changes. We have retooled or created from scratch multiple courses that engage something few of my colleagues seem to consider relevant to the problem: intellectual history. They instead hold firmly to the dictates of positivism, insisting that better training in the methods of science will be the source of rescue. Where does this prejudice come from? Might it be time to pave a new way?