For the record I do have a degree in psychology (albeit a bit dated) and have spent a significant part of my life reading the literature. Also for the record I spent 0 seconds google before replying, I was simply speaking from memory and my current understanding of the literature. I know about the replication crisis and I know about the placebo-effect of psychotherapy (I even spent a couple of sentences in my previous post telling you that).

The replication crisis is not nearly as universal as you are leading on here. There are a few very famous experiments which haven’t been replicated, and have since been discredited. The most prominent example is the Stanford Prison experiment. A more recent example here is social priming. What happens is exactly what I described earlier, there is a meta-analysis (or a review of other kind), the previous finding is scrutinized and we move on. In clinical psychology the replication crisis is not as overarching. There may be a research showing that some aspects of some therapy is working better then other, or some fine tuning of some method is yielding better results, which is then not replicated, but whole programs such as Cognitive Behavior Therapy have ample research with ample evidence that shows its effectiveness over a simple dialog therapy.

But honestly I don’t know why we are even talking about this. This has nothing to with personality tests and whether or not they have any scientific merit.

EDIT: By the way, I read some of the source in that wikipedia article, particularly the section about psychology, and this here is an excellent summary of the situation inside clinical psychology (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5835722/). It is not stating much except the issue also exists inside the field of clinical psychology, and that researchers should be aware of it. The author mentions that efficacy of psychotherapy is probably overestimated, probably around 20-40%. The authors do not state—nor do I think they believe—that psychotherapy has no effect over a structured conversation, merely that the estimated efficacy is probably inflated.

EDIT 2: I read over our thread again and I think I know how this conversation derailed so much.

> It turns out that psychology is just about having structured conversations about your feelings. Personality tests are a framework for that, and they work for that purpose (and basically that purpose alone).

Now if I had read this sentence of yours better I probably wouldn’t have spent all this time arguing with you. Because this sentence is straight up not true. Personality tests have never been solely about finding frameworks for clinical psychology. Now there are some clinical psychologists that use theories from personal psychology, or use tests constructed by psychometrisians. But the goals of personality psychologists have always been about explaining behavior. They do this by constructing models based. Modern personality psychology presuppose certain personality types that they claim can be found by doing factor analysis on their tests, and that these types increase the likelihood that some people behave a certain way in certain situations. Some of these behaviors are pathological and some clinical psychologists claim that is a basis for certain treatment. However at this point in time, these theories are getting less and less relevant in favor of theories from cognitive, neuro, and—to a lesser extent—behavioral psychology. Note though that clinical psychologist doesn’t have to subscribe to any of this, and can simply apply which ever treatment has the best potential. As clinical psychology is not about explaining behavior, but simply to help people live a better life, and save lives that are at risk.