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Day after day I grow more convinced psychology research is a sham.

christkv 3y ago
The joke has always been that psychology studies is the study of small groups of psychology students and their afflictions.
- curiousgal 3y ago
  That or Mechanical Turk workers...
kwere 3y ago
As a patient i see the field at best as a set of best practices in theoretical scenarios. But i imagine getting valuable insights out of (troubled and ashamed) people minds to help them is really hard. Surprisingly pharmacology in Psychiatry instead works well and reliably for a lot of conditions
tepitoperrito 3y ago
You might like the psych writing over at https://www.astralcodexten.com/archive?sort=top https://www.astralcodexten.com/archive?sort=top or gwern.net
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Despite his positive reputation here, Scott Alexander has similar issues - he does not only rely on gold standard research
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    Including less-than-ideal data in a broader analysis is completely fine as long as you're aware of the data quality issues and adjust your weights accordingly. IMO Alexander does a pretty good job of this - I recall many occasions where his writing references a study while also caveating that reference because of a limited sample size or a slightly implausible effect size or some other qualm. There's a world of difference between trying to make sense of a topic when none of the available data is all that great, and outright fabricating data to make a name for yourself.
unsupp0rted 3y ago
The only social sciences research that isn't a sham is the kind that can be used to consistently predict non-obvious things or consistently modify otherwise non-modifiable things. I don't know of any such research.
- chaostheory 3y ago
  They should all be called social studies and not “social sciences”. As you’ve pointed out, they’re not real sciences because the requirement for being a science is having a repeatable theoretical model. To be fair, they’re not completely useless either. They just need to graduate from being an astrology into an astronomy, but I’m not sure how that’s possible without a near perfect world simulation.
dang 3y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The joke has always been that psychology studies is the study of small groups of psychology students and their afflictions.

curiousgal 3y ago
That or Mechanical Turk workers...

kwere 3y ago

As a patient i see the field at best as a set of best practices in theoretical scenarios. But i imagine getting valuable insights out of (troubled and ashamed) people minds to help them is really hard. Surprisingly pharmacology in Psychiatry instead works well and reliably for a lot of conditions

tepitoperrito 3y ago

You might like the psych writing over at https://www.astralcodexten.com/archive?sort=top https://www.astralcodexten.com/archive?sort=top or gwern.net

whimsicalism 3y ago
Despite his positive reputation here, Scott Alexander has similar issues - he does not only rely on gold standard research
- jdietrich 3y ago
  Including less-than-ideal data in a broader analysis is completely fine as long as you're aware of the data quality issues and adjust your weights accordingly. IMO Alexander does a pretty good job of this - I recall many occasions where his writing references a study while also caveating that reference because of a limited sample size or a slightly implausible effect size or some other qualm. There's a world of difference between trying to make sense of a topic when none of the available data is all that great, and outright fabricating data to make a name for yourself.

unsupp0rted 3y ago

The only social sciences research that isn't a sham is the kind that can be used to consistently predict non-obvious things or consistently modify otherwise non-modifiable things. I don't know of any such research.

chaostheory 3y ago
They should all be called social studies and not “social sciences”. As you’ve pointed out, they’re not real sciences because the requirement for being a science is having a repeatable theoretical model. To be fair, they’re not completely useless either. They just need to graduate from being an astrology into an astronomy, but I’m not sure how that’s possible without a near perfect world simulation.

dang 3y ago

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html