The producibility crisis in Philippine psychology: A reproducibility crisis in the making? by James Montilla Doble

About the speaker

Mx James Montilla Doble (he/they) is a lecturer and PhD student in social psychology at the University of the Philippines Diliman Department of Psychology. His research interests include metapsychology as well as issues related to research ethics. They are affiliated with the following organizations: Center for Open Science, South East Asian Network for Open Science (SEANOS), and Philippine Researchers for Open Science (PROScience). He is also currently one of the graduate student representatives of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) Executive Committee and a member of the Steering Committee of the upcoming Advancing Science in South East Asia (ASISEA) conference in Q4 2021. You can find James here: website and @lysanderjames. 

About the talk

To establish the current state of psychological research in the Philippines, respondents who have completed or are completing graduate studies in psychology were asked what, in their opinion, are the most pressing issues in conducting psychological research in the country. Thematic analysis of responses shows that in contrast with the replication crisis gripping the field in other countries, an enduring “producibility crisis” continues to dominate Philippine psychology twenty years after Bernardo (1997) observed the lack of research culture among Filipino psychologists, which he attributed to lack of resources and negative attitudes towards research. Other than these threats to research production, there is a clear overlap between the problems encountered and mentioned by this study’s respondents and those already identified by metapsychologists from outside of the Philippines, such as poor research competence and efficacy, unethical research conduct, and misaligned incentive structures, e.g., publication bias and the “publish or perish” culture in academia. Implications of the connection between the producibility and replication crises are discussed, as well as solutions to both crises to improve overall producibility and stimulate the growth of Philippine psychology.