Only 36% of Psychology Findings Replicable

One of my friends was just diagnosed with a psychological disorder that does not yet exist, her therapist says, but is very likely to be added as an autism spectrum disorder in the DSM-6. It made me smile a little to hear and I realized that I forgot to write anything about this back in August. This NY Times article, "Psychologists Welcome Analysis Casting Doubt on Their Work" reports:

The field of psychology sustained a damaging blow Thursday: A new analysis found that only 36 percent of findings from almost 100 studies in the top three psychology journals held up when the original experiments were rigorously redone.

After the report was published by the journal Science, commenters on Facebook wisecracked about how “social” and “science” did not belong in the same sentence.

Yet within the field, the reception was much different. Along with pockets of disgruntlement and outrage — no one likes the tired jokes, not to mention having doubt cast on their work — there was a sense of relief. One reason, many psychologists said, is that the authors of the new report were fellow researchers, not critics. It was an inside job.

“It’s like we’ve come clean,” said Alan Kraut, the executive director of the Association for Psychological Science, which publishes one of the journals analyzed in the new report. “This kind of correction is something that has to happen across science, and I’m proud that psychology is leading the charge on this.”

My friend was relating to me how her therapist walked her through her diagnosis, including regarding how he had eliminated personality disorder as a possible diagnosis. He explained to her that to diagnose any personality disorder, the person first has to fit into the parent category "personality disorder", and only then (at least officially, or at least apparently) can the mental health professional diagnose you with a specific form of personality disorder. I thought of how my current therapist diagnosed me with personality disorder not otherwise specified with features of ASPD because he said that the ASPD was more developing than fully developed, like a tween I guess. Which I sort of preferred, as it's a much nicer thing to tell people if I was ever required to do so by a police state or something.

I try to keep an open mind about psychology, but it's hard not to think that if you went to a dozen different mental health professionals, you might not get at least several different diagnoses out of the bunch. I'd actually be super curious if someone were to do this as a study -- what sort of agreement do mental health professionals have in their diagnoses in practice. I'm sure it's already been done?