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Perhaps the biggest take away I found while studying psychology is that a lot of research in the field just couldn't be trusted until you vetted it. Political
by Lawtonfogle 11y ago
Perhaps the biggest take away I found while studying psychology is that a lot of research in the field just couldn't be trusted until you vetted it. Political pressures are too great a corrupting factor. Words would be redefined. Conclusions overstated or over applied. This is on top of the already existing 'publish or perish' issue that impacts science as a whole.
The closer one was to neurology (like physiological psychology), the better it became. The closer one was to sociology (like IO psychology) or to a politically charged issue, the worse it became.
Also applies to psychiatry. I remember reading some of the papers published related to the DSM-V and at one point it looked like little more than peer reviewed version of two siblings fighting (though that was the worse case, not the average).
One big thing is to look at how the researchers defined words and look into how things translate when multiple languages were involved.
- _delirium 11y ago> Words would be redefined. Conclusions overstated or over applied. Even neuroscience has a hearty helping of this. The data itself is one thing, but what it's sold as showing is quite another. For example if you read a claim that neuroscience has discovered something about "addiction", "free will", "motivation", "friendship", "love", etc., dig into how they've chosen to define those terms for the purpose of the study. There's often a bit of concept-laundering going on, where a common term is defined using a very narrow (and often conveniently chosen) definition to show a result, but then the implications of that result are discussed with reference to the original, more general sense of the term. News articles about neuroscience are the worst, of course, but even quite a few scientists themselves do this.