Note: I developed these ideas with Dr. Markus Brauer.
In 1967, the psychologist and grandfather of the modern meta-science movement Paul Meehl identified an apparent paradox in the theory-testing strategies deployed in physics versus psychology (Meehl, 1967). In physics, improvements in precision make it harder to corroborate theory, whereas in psychology, such improvements make corroboration easier. Meehl identified as a root cause of this paradox differences in the purpose to which improvements in precision are deployed: in physics, they are used to more precisely detect deviations from a theory's predictions, whereas in psychology, they are used to more precisely detect deviations from a null hypothesis of no relationship.
