Collaboration between researchers, funding agencies, policy makers, and affected parties from society can have a significant impact on the evidence generation process in social sciences. This is the conclusion of Neil Lewis Jr., a researcher who has been reflecting on the state of evidence in social sciences, particularly during moments of crisis.

Despite having decades of research, social scientists still face difficulties understanding the nature of behaviors well enough to make good predictions about how to change them. Lewis Jr. attributes part of this status quo to the narrow focus of research and the lack of input from the people whose lives the work is intended to represent or influence.

Lewis Jr. notes that the crisis of confidence in social sciences was triggered by the now-famous “false-positive psychology” paper. This crisis of confidence led to discussions about how to improve research methods and the kinds of knowledge produced by social sciences. However, the Covid-19 pandemic and the reckoning about racial and social justice reignited the crisis of relevance in social sciences.

The “false-positive psychology” paper is a 2015 article published in Science by researchers led by John P. A. Ioannidis. The report analysed many psychology studies and found that many of them produced statistically significant results that were likely to be false positives, meaning they were not reliable findings. The article triggered a crisis of confidence in psychology and other social sciences, leading to discussions about improving research methods and increasing transparency and reproducibility in research.

These issues are not new and have been discussed extensively for decades. However, Lewis Jr. argues that collaboration between researchers, funding agencies, policy makers, and affected parties from society can help to address these issues. This collaboration can help to broaden the scope of research, provide diverse perspectives, and ensure that the research produced is relevant and useful to society.

Lewis Jr. believes that the Social Science Research Council’s Mercury Project’s team’s approach to research is a potential solution to improving the evidence generation process. This team focuses on collaboration between researchers, funding agencies, policy makers, and affected parties from society to address pressing issues. By adopting this approach, social scientists can improve the relevance and usefulness of their research and better respond to moments of crisis.

In conclusion, Collaboration between researchers, funding agencies, policymakers, and affected parties from society can significantly impact the evidence-generation process in social sciences, according to researcher Neil Lewis Jr. Despite having decades of research. Social scientists still face difficulties understanding the nature of behaviours well enough to make reasonable predictions about how to change them. Lewis Jr. argues that collaboration can help to address these issues by broadening the scope of research, providing diverse perspectives, and ensuring that research is relevant and valuable to society.

Making the Social Science Research Council’s approach to research, which focuses on collaboration to address pressing issues, is a potential solution to improving the evidence-generation process across all social sciences research fields.