The recent reform debates in psychological science, prompted by a widespread crisis of confidence, have exposed and destabilized the so-called myth of self-correction, that is, the problem that most scientists perceive their disciplines as self-correcting without engaging in actual practices that correct the scientific record. In this paper, building on the idea of self-correction as a myth, I propose another myth common to psychological science: the myth of self-organization. The myth of self-organization is the idea that scientific literature will organize itself into something the community adding to it would recognize as systematic knowledge; while the actual members of those communities do not engage in effective ways of organizing it. I argue for the existence of the myth self-organization by taking a historical look at how the scientific literature was construed by psychologists during the 20th century. In my view, the literature, and behaviors of scientists related to it, becomes a social institution exerting influence over the science it belongs to. I conclude with a critical discussion of self-organization through the debates about preregistration and theory formalization in psychology’s reform movement.

最近的心理科学改革辩论，在普遍的信心危机的推动下，暴露并动摇了所谓的自我纠正神话，即大多数科学家认为他们的学科在没有实际实践的情况下自我纠正的问题更正科学记录。在这篇论文中，基于自我纠正作为一个神话的想法，我提出了另一个心理科学共有的神话：自我组织的神话。自组织的神话是这样一种观点，即科学文献将自己组织成某种东西，社区添加到它会认为是系统知识。而这些社区的实际成员并没有以有效的方式组织它。我通过对 20 世纪心理学家如何解释科学文献进行历史考察来论证神话自组织的存在。在我看来，与文学相关的科学家的文学和行为，成为对其所属科学施加影响的社会制度。最后，我通过关于心理学改革运动中关于预注册和理论形式化的辩论，对自组织进行了批判性讨论。