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Why psychology isn't science
LA Times ^ | 7-13-2012 | Alex B. Berezow

Posted on 07/13/2012 1:03:03 PM PDT by Sir Napsalot

Psychologist Timothy D. Wilson, a professor at the University of Virginia, expressed resentment in his Times Op-Ed article on Thursday over the fact that most scientists don't consider his field a real science. He casts scientists as condescending bullies:

"Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball.

"There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the 'hard' ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the 'soft' ones (psychology, sociology)."

The dismissive attitude scientists have toward psychologists isn't rooted in snobbery; it's rooted in intellectual frustration. It's rooted in the failure of psychologists to acknowledge that they don't have the same claim on secular truth that the hard sciences do. It's rooted in the tired exasperation that scientists feel when non-scientists try to pretend they are scientists.

That's right. Psychology isn't science.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: faithandphilosophy; psychology; science; uva; virginia
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To: Sir Napsalot

Psychiatry is a science. Psychology is a skill.

Being a skill, there is a lot of room for incompetent morons however, with the right person, a talented psychologist can be a Godsend.


21 posted on 07/13/2012 1:34:11 PM PDT by Psycho_Bunny (OWS = The Great American Snivel War)
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To: freedumb2003
Dr. Sheldon Cooper is definitely a scientist. He would have written an even more scathing paper but would approve the gist of this article.
22 posted on 07/13/2012 1:34:11 PM PDT by Sir Napsalot (Pravda + Useful Idiots = CCCP; JournOList + Useful Idiots = DopeyChangey!)
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To: Sir Napsalot
You are right, I didn’t know what Tom said ......

It's a classic. You should google/you tube it. If you thought the Hollywood elites were egomaniacs....Cruise takes the game to a whole new level. He's a total wack job. In fact, he's gone so psychotic, we have taken films he has been in off our family blacklist.

He should be diagnosed as crazy and institutionalized. Ideological pun fully intended here.

23 posted on 07/13/2012 1:35:05 PM PDT by Tenacious 1 (The Click-&-Paste Media exists & works in Utopia, riding unicorns & sniffing pixy dust.)
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To: spel_grammer_an_punct_polise

“No one on the planet can predict how any one individual is going to react to any given stressful situation.”

lol...never been married, huh?


24 posted on 07/13/2012 1:35:30 PM PDT by Psycho_Bunny (OWS = The Great American Snivel War)
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To: Tenacious 1

I vote for the soup.


25 posted on 07/13/2012 1:36:39 PM PDT by brivette
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To: allmendream
I work for a pharma company also. Post #20 - Perfectly stated.

In case you work for the same company I do...Get back to work! :o)

26 posted on 07/13/2012 1:37:36 PM PDT by Tenacious 1 (The Click-&-Paste Media exists & works in Utopia, riding unicorns & sniffing pixy dust.)
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To: Sir Napsalot

>>Dr. Sheldon Cooper is definitely a scientist. He would have written an even more scathing paper but would approve the gist of this article.<<

The beautiful irony is he operates in a 100% theoretical branch...


27 posted on 07/13/2012 1:39:53 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (obozo could bring back literal slavery with chains and still he will get 85+% of the black vote)
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To: Revolting cat!
Well, psychology isn’t a pedestrian crosswalk either, so?

Psychologists aren't claiming to be pedestrian crosswalks; they are, however, claiming to be scientists.

28 posted on 07/13/2012 1:41:03 PM PDT by Bob
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To: Tenacious 1
OK! Getting back to work!!!

LOL!

And thanks!

I am - before any female undergarments get uncomfortable accumulations - NOT against psychology or psychiatry.

They do a lot of good for a lot of people - and I am all for rigorously studying of human consciousness in both normal and abnormal states!

But there is more to science than just rigorous study. You can't just add “ology” to the end of something and have it be science.

Ok - back to work!!!

P.S.

You too!!!!

29 posted on 07/13/2012 1:41:44 PM PDT by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
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To: Sir Napsalot

Psychology will only become “real” science when we can digitize the entire working human brain and analyse it like we would a computer in a car.


30 posted on 07/13/2012 1:46:16 PM PDT by GraceG
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To: Secret Agent Man

Politicizing psychology with homosexuality undermines the real good that comes from the discipline. Ask any number of vets who have been successfully been treated for PTSD.


31 posted on 07/13/2012 2:04:20 PM PDT by Melas (u)
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To: Psycho_Bunny

Married 27 years....this time. :-)


32 posted on 07/13/2012 2:14:41 PM PDT by spel_grammer_an_punct_polise (I wanna start a Seniors' Motor Scooter Gang. Wanna join?)
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To: Sir Napsalot
Psychology-translates to "the study of the soul". Psychology is not science.
33 posted on 07/13/2012 2:14:50 PM PDT by Texas Songwriter (Ia)
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To: allmendream
As one in four women in America are currently on mental health drugs - either throughout history 25% of women were CRAZY - or the diagnosis is a bit fast and loose - and self serving.

Ummm, do I get to vote on that one?

≤}B^)

34 posted on 07/13/2012 2:29:34 PM PDT by Erasmus (Zwischen des Teufels und des tiefen, blauen Meers)
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To: Sir Napsalot

[ Why psychology isn’t science ]

Because modern psychology is just somebodys opinion...
Those opinions are not facts..


35 posted on 07/13/2012 2:29:34 PM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: Tenacious 1
much of what is studied as normal and abnormal is in varying degrees subjective.

The Behaviorist school at least tries to quantify behavior in statistical terms, thereby rendering "normal" as an objective value. The danger there is that in doing so, they reduce their patients to little more than statistical abstractions -- dehumanized standard deviations or analyses of variance.

So while psychology isn't the "hard" science that math is, it can be described scientifically, if that evolves to the patient's benefit. However, I doubt that it does.

36 posted on 07/13/2012 2:29:34 PM PDT by IronJack (=)
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To: Sir Napsalot

First, One of my degrees is in psychology. The first week of every psychology class they would include an introductory chapter stating how psychology is a science.

If someone tells me they are telling the truth, I generally believe them. But if they keep repeating it, I often wonder if they are trying to convince me or themselves. You get my drift, I never considered psychology a science.

The reason I never considered psychology a science was due to the biased variable of the critical mind and the influence of past perceptions on any measured variable. It was impossible to stimulate consciousness without stimulating one of the senses and thus also the critical mind. Thus, psychological studies were correlations at best.

Then I discovered a new technique that stimulated stored memories and directly generates a measurable response in the subject without stimulating any of the five senses. I just demonstrated it at a conference in Chicago this past weekend for over a hundred attendees.

I had volunteers from the group come down and I would touch the stored memories in the fields surrounding their physical bodies and move their physical bodies in various directions. I did this while standing 10-15 feet from the subject, their eyes were closed, I said nothing and did not touch their physical body in any way. Using this, I told them of detail events in their lives back to conception and removed the related emotional trauma (if any) for them. The subject did not speak at all prior to me stating my findings. It is so easy. I can read stored memories of an individual’s life experiences almost the way x-rays do bones. They are real physical tangible objects to me. I do not use power of suggestion in any way. It’s easy to explain the neuroscience of how I am doing this. Eric Kandel and Joe Ledoux are missing the boat in their memory research at Columbia and NYU!

When this scientific methodology is utilized, psychology is a science. The Duke University Medical School IRB has already approved the research project where I demonstrate how this works. It is measurable, repeatable, eliminated variable bias, is a direct stimulus response relationship, and works in a double blind. In my initial trial I hit 17 of 20 tests right on and only missed the three as the screens creating the blind were located too close together and the subject’s memory field overlap was too great. i.e. no matter which screen blind the subject was behind the memory field extended in front of both of them. They need to be at least 20 feet apart to create a separation.


37 posted on 07/13/2012 2:30:04 PM PDT by tired&retired
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To: Sir Napsalot

In all fairness, sciences and “social studies”, both exist in a ratio of ‘science’ to ‘study’, which varies between disciplines.

That is, ‘science’ is a very rigorous set of reproducible procedures that should produce a nearly identical outcome each time they are performed.

However, interpolation or extrapolation of scientific outcomes is a study.

A chess analogy is a good one. If you successfully follow the rules and play a game of chess, all you have succeeded in doing is playing a game of chess. If you do not follow the rules, you have not played a game of chess, no matter what it looks like. And even if you have won a game of chess it changes nothing. You cannot interpolate or extrapolate based on what you have done, such as you are a better chess player, beyond that particular game.

In the case of psychology, there is deductive psychology, which is a study, and clinical psychology, which is much more scientific.

Compare that with say, astrophysics, so much of which is theoretical and unique that while they can assert some things as scientific facts, much of what they do is observational and speculative, that is, a study. And since the Hubble telescope, they have been severely humbled, and repeatedly, by what they do not know.


38 posted on 07/13/2012 2:30:22 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy
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To: Tenacious 1

It if weren’t for psychology, those scientists wouldn’t know what they were trying to scientifically “fix.”

You are describing biochemistry which can have a psychologically measurable result. Even so, most of the drugs perform little better than placebos in the scientific studies.


39 posted on 07/13/2012 2:33:35 PM PDT by tired&retired
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To: Erasmus
“Crazy, I'm crazy for feeling so lonely
I'm crazy, crazy for feeling so blue
I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted
And then someday you'd leave me for somebody new
Worry, why do I let myself worry?
Wondering what in the world did I do?
Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you
I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying
And I'm crazy for loving you
Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you
I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying
And I'm crazy for loving you.”

Patsy Cline OWNS this song - but amazingly enough it was written by Willie Nelson! Now THAT is CRAZY!!!!

40 posted on 07/13/2012 2:34:31 PM PDT by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
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