Anatomy of a Train Wreck: The Rise and Fall of Priming Research
Ruth Leys · first published 2024 · ISBN 9780226836959
Leys chronicles the rise of social priming research, the celebrity status it achieved, and its spectacular failure to replicate. She examines how respected researchers built careers on effects that vanished under scrutiny, and what psychological and institutional factors allowed the field to embrace findings that didn't hold.
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This is the book directly addressing pop-psychology's credibility crisis. Before grad school, you need to understand not just what went wrong in priming research, but why even careful scientists can be fooled by their own data. Leys holds the field accountable without dismissing it.