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Psychology gets a bad reputation because it is still new. Remember, Astrology turned into Astronomy, Alchemy became Chemistry, and Philosophy (old) became Mat

Psychology gets a bad reputation because it is still new. Remember, Astrology turned into Astronomy, Alchemy became Chemistry, and Philosophy (old) became Math and Physics. Psychology is still a newcomer, and study of the mind and the human animal is difficult because it is complex and hard to measure. That doesn’t mean you can’t start somewhere.

DarkNova6 3y ago
Psychology gets a bad rep because a lot of bad science is conducted in the field. It’s rate of reproducibility is among the lowest of all sciences. These are structural and methodical issues which are not at all related to it’s age. In many cases it is simply bias, negligence or pure fraud.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  You are to quick to blame bad actors. I don't think that the typical student or professor has so much evil intention for negligence and fraud. These are examples of a 'new' science. Humans are complex and hard to measure, so yes, there are problems with study design, and re-producibility. Because they are working it out. That is because of the field of study, not evil intent, some dark cabal of researchers putting out false data on purpose. If there is some obvious way to solve these problems, then those people should do it. I was going to throw out some sarcastic example from another field. But guess, when I think about it, maybe it does happen. String Theory in Physics is an example of "group think" leading an entire field down the wrong rabbit hole of stuff that is faulty and can't be measured. So guess it can happen anywhere.
  - sandspar 3y ago
    For what it's worth, during my psychology courses in university, I witnessed professors lie to the class, sometimes in response to direct questions. The topics were things that psychology professors would surely know, so I don't think they were simply misinformed.
p-e-w 3y ago
Being new is not an excuse for producing meaningless garbage. It's okay to not know. It's not okay to claim results when there aren't any to be drawn from the available data. And astrology did not "turn into" astronomy. Astronomy developed (in part) as a result of astrologers trying to predict the motion of celestial objects. But astrology is not at all the forerunner of scientific astronomy, since its main concern (how celestial movements influence human lives) lacks any factual underpinnings. It's not that astrology produced incorrect results; the entire endeavor is fundamentally wrong.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  You are only looking at other fields successes and only Psychology's failures. Quick to forget all the false starts and wrong directions in other fields. Might need to do some history readying. Of course the study of celestial movements eventually became astronomy, who do you think was looking at the stars before astronomy existed. All of history isn't some nice linear line of analytic reasoning. I wonder if HN also has a general bias against history, since it is a non-technical field with a lot of interpretations.
  - p-e-w 3y ago
    > Of course the study of celestial movements eventually became astronomy Astrology is not "the study of celestial movements". It's the utterly baseless claim that those movements have a high-level influence on human lives. That's not proto-science, it's pseudoscience. And it's not at all comparable to incorrect theories in other fields (like phlogiston or the luminiferous aether). There is no reason to expect that astrology works, and its claims are made without any supporting evidence. That has nothing to do with science.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      You are making my argument for me. Do you not see it? Make the leap. I am NOT saying Astrology is true. I'm saying that a lot of people over history, long before astronomy exited, observed the stars, and traced their movement, and yes, some of them attributed their movements to 'gods', or did what today we called 'Astrology'. Then eventually, someone was like, man, these celestial bodies seem to follow some patterns, and drifted away from thinking it was 'the gods', and started putting math to it, and boom, we look back on it and call it 'Astronomy'. But Astronomy did not pop into existence fully formed as a science.
bell-cot 3y ago
Psychology has no "because it is still new" excuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology Electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, nuclear physics, and many other difficult fields of study are far, far newer than psychology. And yet have no problems with reliably producing significant, real-world results.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  You are only looking at other fields successes and only Psychology's failures. Quick to forget all the false starts and wrong directions in other fields.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    I suggest, instead of bringing up how other science has failed too, you bring up the successes of psychology. Nobody here will be convinced by scientific whataboutism, however, if you were to compose a comment on the important successes of psychology with cited sources i think that would work much better
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      The antagonism is to great. You want me to cite sources to justify an entire field? Just go look. Why would I spend a lot of time on sources that nobody will read. It isn't my job to educate the world. Do your own research.
    - lanstin 3y ago
      Big five personality types, fight or flight brain circuits, pause and plan brain circuits, fundamentals drive of brain to predict what happens next (externally and internally), lack of universal emotional responses. The existence of things going on in the brain that the mind has very limited awareness of (the “unconscious”).
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    One hallmark of actual sciences is that they notice their false starts and wrong directions, learn from them, improve fairly rapidly, and can ~reliably deliver complex things that actually work. By that metric, Psychology seems profoundly lacking.
chaxor 3y ago
Cool. So when do we get whatever science psychology will turn into?
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  I think they call themselves neuroscientist now. That seems more respectable, like a real science. I'm sure people will say "no, that is different". But that is what we are discussing, Psychology grows and branches and now there is something called "Neuroscience" that is more refined, and has narrowed the field to something measurable.
  - chaxor 3y ago
    Almost. Specific sections of neuroscience, which are actually just cell bio or biochem applied to brain tissue, sure. Often behavioral neuroscience has much of the same problems of not really having good definitions that map to tangible observables. Once good definitions are made, only then can decent work be done.

DarkNova6 3y ago

Psychology gets a bad rep because a lot of bad science is conducted in the field. It’s rate of reproducibility is among the lowest of all sciences. These are structural and methodical issues which are not at all related to it’s age. In many cases it is simply bias, negligence or pure fraud.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
You are to quick to blame bad actors. I don't think that the typical student or professor has so much evil intention for negligence and fraud. These are examples of a 'new' science. Humans are complex and hard to measure, so yes, there are problems with study design, and re-producibility. Because they are working it out. That is because of the field of study, not evil intent, some dark cabal of researchers putting out false data on purpose. If there is some obvious way to solve these problems, then those people should do it. I was going to throw out some sarcastic example from another field. But guess, when I think about it, maybe it does happen. String Theory in Physics is an example of "group think" leading an entire field down the wrong rabbit hole of stuff that is faulty and can't be measured. So guess it can happen anywhere.
- sandspar 3y ago
  For what it's worth, during my psychology courses in university, I witnessed professors lie to the class, sometimes in response to direct questions. The topics were things that psychology professors would surely know, so I don't think they were simply misinformed.

p-e-w 3y ago

Being new is not an excuse for producing meaningless garbage. It's okay to not know. It's not okay to claim results when there aren't any to be drawn from the available data. And astrology did not "turn into" astronomy. Astronomy developed (in part) as a result of astrologers trying to predict the motion of celestial objects. But astrology is not at all the forerunner of scientific astronomy, since its main concern (how celestial movements influence human lives) lacks any factual underpinnings. It's not that astrology produced incorrect results; the entire endeavor is fundamentally wrong.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
You are only looking at other fields successes and only Psychology's failures. Quick to forget all the false starts and wrong directions in other fields. Might need to do some history readying. Of course the study of celestial movements eventually became astronomy, who do you think was looking at the stars before astronomy existed. All of history isn't some nice linear line of analytic reasoning. I wonder if HN also has a general bias against history, since it is a non-technical field with a lot of interpretations.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > Of course the study of celestial movements eventually became astronomy Astrology is not "the study of celestial movements". It's the utterly baseless claim that those movements have a high-level influence on human lives. That's not proto-science, it's pseudoscience. And it's not at all comparable to incorrect theories in other fields (like phlogiston or the luminiferous aether). There is no reason to expect that astrology works, and its claims are made without any supporting evidence. That has nothing to do with science.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    You are making my argument for me. Do you not see it? Make the leap. I am NOT saying Astrology is true. I'm saying that a lot of people over history, long before astronomy exited, observed the stars, and traced their movement, and yes, some of them attributed their movements to 'gods', or did what today we called 'Astrology'. Then eventually, someone was like, man, these celestial bodies seem to follow some patterns, and drifted away from thinking it was 'the gods', and started putting math to it, and boom, we look back on it and call it 'Astronomy'. But Astronomy did not pop into existence fully formed as a science.

bell-cot 3y ago

Psychology has no "because it is still new" excuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_psychology Electrical engineering, aerospace engineering, nuclear physics, and many other difficult fields of study are far, far newer than psychology. And yet have no problems with reliably producing significant, real-world results.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
You are only looking at other fields successes and only Psychology's failures. Quick to forget all the false starts and wrong directions in other fields.
- wholinator2 3y ago
  I suggest, instead of bringing up how other science has failed too, you bring up the successes of psychology. Nobody here will be convinced by scientific whataboutism, however, if you were to compose a comment on the important successes of psychology with cited sources i think that would work much better
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    The antagonism is to great. You want me to cite sources to justify an entire field? Just go look. Why would I spend a lot of time on sources that nobody will read. It isn't my job to educate the world. Do your own research.
  - lanstin 3y ago
    Big five personality types, fight or flight brain circuits, pause and plan brain circuits, fundamentals drive of brain to predict what happens next (externally and internally), lack of universal emotional responses. The existence of things going on in the brain that the mind has very limited awareness of (the “unconscious”).
- bell-cot 3y ago
  One hallmark of actual sciences is that they notice their false starts and wrong directions, learn from them, improve fairly rapidly, and can ~reliably deliver complex things that actually work. By that metric, Psychology seems profoundly lacking.

chaxor 3y ago

Cool. So when do we get whatever science psychology will turn into?

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
I think they call themselves neuroscientist now. That seems more respectable, like a real science. I'm sure people will say "no, that is different". But that is what we are discussing, Psychology grows and branches and now there is something called "Neuroscience" that is more refined, and has narrowed the field to something measurable.
- chaxor 3y ago
  Almost. Specific sections of neuroscience, which are actually just cell bio or biochem applied to brain tissue, sure. Often behavioral neuroscience has much of the same problems of not really having good definitions that map to tangible observables. Once good definitions are made, only then can decent work be done.