The Worst of Both Worlds: A Comparative Analysis of Errors in Learning from Data in Psychology and Machine Learning

Abstract

Arguments that machine learning (ML) is facing a reproducibility and replication crisis suggest that some published claims in research cannot be taken at face value. Concerns inspire analogies to the replication crisis affecting the social and medical sciences. A deeper understanding of what reproducibility concerns in supervised ML research have in common with the replication crisis in experimental science puts the new concerns in perspective, and helps researchers avoid "the worst of both worlds,"where ML researchers begin borrowing methodologies from explanatory modeling without understanding their limitations and vice versa. We contribute a comparative analysis of concerns about inductive learning that arise in causal attribution as exemplified in psychology versus predictive modeling as exemplified in ML. We identify common themes in reform discussions, like overreliance on asymptotic theory and non-credible beliefs about real-world data generating processes. We argue that in both fields, claims from learning are implied to generalize outside the specific environment studied (e.g., the input dataset or subject sample, modeling implementation, etc.) but are often difficult to refute due to underspecification of key parts of the learning pipeline. We conclude by discussing risks that arise when sources of errors are misdiagnosed and the need to acknowledge the role of human inductive biases in learning and reform.