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satt comments on This is why we can't have social science - Less Wrong
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When natural scientists attempt to replicate famous experiments where the original result was clearly correct, with what probability do they tend to succeed? Is it closer to 1 than, say, .7?
I've suggested on LW before that most attempts at physics experiments are wrong, if one counts physics students' attempts. The standard reaction to a student getting a counterintuitive result is, "well, obviously they messed up the experiment". I notice I feel OK with that response in the case of physics but don't like Mitchell trying it for psychology.
(I wonder whether biology students have to count chromosomes.)
Students are particularly bad at experimentation (which is why they have to take those labs in the first place), and the experiments they do are selected for being particularly fundamental and well-understood (in particular, they have already been replicated lots of times). I think this is a more important difference than physics versus psychology.