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The problem with 2, is that psychology is happy to acknowledge that many of its results are context dependent [0]. The entire field of cross-cultural psychology
by kyleschiller 9y ago
The problem with 2, is that psychology is happy to acknowledge that many of its results are context dependent [0]. The entire field of cross-cultural psychology is founded on the understanding that psychological findings may not generalize across cultures. While this suggest that there are likely no "natural laws" in psychology, it does nothing to dismiss the importance and usefulness of the non-natural laws we do find. Given this framework, falsifiability still applies, but may only suggest refinement of the conditions of our study.
Your third option seems to require the pre-empirical determination of which results of "unlikely" and instead choosing to believe only in the studies that confirm what we already intuitively believe.
Having said that, I completely agree with your first point. Replication studies alongside the increased visibility of studies that fail to reject the null hypothesis are absolutely essential.
[0] http://psych.wustl.edu/memory/Roddy%20article%20PDF's/Roediger%20(2008)_ARP.pdf http://psych.wustl.edu/memory/Roddy%20article%20PDF's/Roedig...
- onli 9y ago> The problem with 2, is that psychology is happy to acknowledge that many of its results are context dependent Yes. But that's only a specific kind of psychology. In my master I had a psychology professor (who came from the physics department originally) who clearly said all of that is bogus, and the only thing psychology should do are clear-cut studies like finding just noticeable differences. In his case, he was studying how the brain processes visual input that way. Very interesting, and worked well for him.