This seems to be the crux of all of the scientific issues with psychiatry and studies of personal and social behavior more broadly. Strict definitions of what i

This seems to be the crux of all of the scientific issues with psychiatry and studies of personal and social behavior more broadly. Strict definitions of what is being measured and ways to go about measuring those things without administrator or self reporting bias don’t seem to exist, or at least they don’t seem to be employed that often. There are clever ways to get around those issues and tie theories about behavior to observed action in the real world, and there are a number of psychological theories that come up with a plausible sounding evolutionary history to certain thoughts and behavior that seem correct, but a lack of good measurement instruments seems to be a very big problem preventing more concrete answers to a lot of different questions about the mind. When talking about things other than motor or perceptual related studies of the mind (bionics related stuff), the most common measurement tool seems to be self reported surveys, and although I think there are tricks you can do when wording questions and statistically analyzing results to try to account for patients trying to answer in ways they feel like they should that aren’t necessarily accurate/make sure people don’t misinterpret questions, that whole way of investigating claims seems to be very very shaky. It’s a common complaint about the field, and I’m sure a lot of psychologists and psychiatrists are sick of hearing it, but I haven’t felt like I’ve ever gotten an adequate response about why it’s not a valid complaint.