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Modern Psychology is having a lot of these sorts of results over the last decade, none of their methods are holding up under proper scrutiny. They are strugglin

Modern Psychology is having a lot of these sorts of results over the last decade, none of their methods are holding up under proper scrutiny. They are struggling to reproduce findings but more critically even the reproduced ones are turning out to be statistical and mathematical errors like shown here. Some of the findings have also done severe harm to patients over the decades as well, I can't help but think we need a lot of caution when it comes to psychology results given its harmful uses (such as the abuse of ill patients) and its lack of truthful results.

Phileosopher 5y ago
I'm convinced it's associated with the methodology of how psychology has approached matters. In the world of biology, you're observing the world around you. Same for physics, chemistry, et al. This means that you can set up proper controls to obscure your own presence from any potential results (e.g., isolate everything in another room, use cameras to avoid being near animals, etc.) Psychology has the same nightmare as quantum physics: pre-existing thoughts and beliefs literally define what results you end up with. I'm convinced that psych is a victim of the "new" way of doing science: treating the Scientific Method™ as a self-evident concept instead of regarding science as a vastly certain domain of metaphysics.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Well, all sciences have this issue : see Kuhn, Feyerabend... https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/ https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/ It would be kind of ironic if psychologists were more susceptible to the "Pop-Baconian" simplification of science ? And damning if what I've heard about psychology going through multiple paradigms during the 20th century alone is true. But then, indeed, also understandable, due to the "softness" and "paradigmlessness" of the subject matter, as Kuhn had pointedout the later back then ? It's still sad how we now have detailed theories and histories of science, but in practice scientists show no interest in trying to learn from them, nor the mistakes of their predecessors? But then maybe that would have too high of a cost. (Consider all those successful projects where the founders later say : "we didn't knew what we were getting into / that this was considered impossible".) Bonus : Wiseman & Schlitz’s attempts to do an adversarial super-controlled parapsychological experiment : ( IV. ) https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...
- deleted 5y ago
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aidenn0 5y ago
So many psychology experiments are so fantastically underpowered, that if the effect they are attempting to measure were real, odds are that it would have to be of such a large magnitude that it would completely overturn all of our beliefs on how humans function. And they can publish with a P value of 0.049. So, implicit in the standards for publishing new research in psychology is "We think there is much greater than a 5% chance that our entire field is wrong" which is not a great place to start from.
roguecoder 5y ago
Maybe asking 45 Cornell undergraduates and then generalizing that to "people" was a bad idea after all.

Phileosopher 5y ago

I'm convinced it's associated with the methodology of how psychology has approached matters. In the world of biology, you're observing the world around you. Same for physics, chemistry, et al. This means that you can set up proper controls to obscure your own presence from any potential results (e.g., isolate everything in another room, use cameras to avoid being near animals, etc.) Psychology has the same nightmare as quantum physics: pre-existing thoughts and beliefs literally define what results you end up with. I'm convinced that psych is a victim of the "new" way of doing science: treating the Scientific Method™ as a self-evident concept instead of regarding science as a vastly certain domain of metaphysics.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
Well, all sciences have this issue : see Kuhn, Feyerabend... https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/ https://samzdat.com/2018/05/19/science-under-high-modernism/ It would be kind of ironic if psychologists were more susceptible to the "Pop-Baconian" simplification of science ? And damning if what I've heard about psychology going through multiple paradigms during the 20th century alone is true. But then, indeed, also understandable, due to the "softness" and "paradigmlessness" of the subject matter, as Kuhn had pointedout the later back then ? It's still sad how we now have detailed theories and histories of science, but in practice scientists show no interest in trying to learn from them, nor the mistakes of their predecessors? But then maybe that would have too high of a cost. (Consider all those successful projects where the founders later say : "we didn't knew what we were getting into / that this was considered impossible".) Bonus : Wiseman & Schlitz’s attempts to do an adversarial super-controlled parapsychological experiment : ( IV. ) https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...
deleted 5y ago
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aidenn0 5y ago

So many psychology experiments are so fantastically underpowered, that if the effect they are attempting to measure were real, odds are that it would have to be of such a large magnitude that it would completely overturn all of our beliefs on how humans function. And they can publish with a P value of 0.049. So, implicit in the standards for publishing new research in psychology is "We think there is much greater than a 5% chance that our entire field is wrong" which is not a great place to start from.

roguecoder 5y ago

Maybe asking 45 Cornell undergraduates and then generalizing that to "people" was a bad idea after all.