Pashler can’t quite disguise his disdain for such a defense. “That doesn’t make sense to me,” he says. “You published it. That must mean you think it is a repeatable piece of work. Why can’t we do it just the way you did it?”
That doesn’t seem right at all. If Bargh’s statement that the state of the field has come a long way since the experiments were first conducted, and they now know more about the conditions which provoke those responses, were completely true, then it would follow that Bargh believed it was a repeatable piece of work when he published it, but now holds different beliefs about the circumstances required to replicate those results.
On the other hand, Bargh’s reply seems even more shoddy. If he really bought into what he was saying and wanted to conduct good science, then the appropriate response should be to describe an experiment that he believes would replicate the results, for other scientists to review to see if it properly controls for confounding factors, and if it’s solid then some of the many scientists interested in trying to replicate his results can perform that experiment.
To quote some of the bolded text
That doesn’t seem right at all. If Bargh’s statement that the state of the field has come a long way since the experiments were first conducted, and they now know more about the conditions which provoke those responses, were completely true, then it would follow that Bargh believed it was a repeatable piece of work when he published it, but now holds different beliefs about the circumstances required to replicate those results.
On the other hand, Bargh’s reply seems even more shoddy. If he really bought into what he was saying and wanted to conduct good science, then the appropriate response should be to describe an experiment that he believes would replicate the results, for other scientists to review to see if it properly controls for confounding factors, and if it’s solid then some of the many scientists interested in trying to replicate his results can perform that experiment.