The Causes and Consequences of a Scientific Literature We Cannot Trust: An Evidence-Based Practice Perspective

Abstract

Kepes and McDaniel (2013) have provided us with a valuable and challenging overview of some of the poor scientific practices that have become institutionalized within industrial and organizational (I–O) psychology research. As they make clear, these dubious scientific practices are not unique to I–O psychology, they are not new, and have been subject to serious and well-founded criticism for decades. Dubious practices are to be found in many areas of practice, and evidence-based perspectives seek, in part, to understand why such practices are adopted, what else, apart from evidence, shapes practice decisions, and what evidence-based approaches to making practice decisions might look like. We believe these perspectives provide further insights into the issues raised in the focal article. We first discuss the fact that researchers are themselves practitioners. Next, we consider some of the reasons I–O and HR practitioners give for adopting dubious practices and illustrate how these closely parallel researchers own practice decisions. Finally, we address the question of how practitioners can be evidence based if the scientific evidence itself is untrustworthy.