I wonder how separate "willpower" is from the central governor theory [0]? Maybe they're completely unrelated and both tire fires.

But I remember reading Tim Noakes' whole ~1000 page tome "Lore of Running" 15 years ago (in high school) which discussed the idea at length and thinking "If only I could have some control over my central governor, I could run under 4 minutes." Is that the same as hoping to "will your way" to a sub 4:00 mile?

Not sure where the research stands now.

[0] http://jeb.biologists.org/content/204/18/3225.short

Easy, the tire fire is specifically in social psychology research. Other areas of psychology (e.g. cognitive, developmental, personality, etc) have their problems but in most cases no more so than other disciplines.

To be fair, the reproducibility crisis is widespread throughout many, many areas of science. There are many tire fires all over the place; people just started noticing it in a widespread way with social psych:

http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-...

Also, to be fair, the willpower hypothesis that was discredited is really about ego-depletion, the idea that willpower is (or reflects) a finite resource that is used by an array of neuropsychological processes. It's not that crazy of an idea, as there are many limits in human behavior and physiology.

For a great summary, see: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story...