7 ms·

It's a semantic nit-pick about the definition of 'science'. He seems to have written an article about it here if you're curious: http://www.arachnoid.com/psycho

It's a semantic nit-pick about the definition of 'science'. He seems to have written an article about it here if you're curious: http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html Take it with a grain of salt though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6194296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6194296 Either way, this argument is rather orthogonal to whether-or-not the situation is actually 'worthy' of future investigation. So it could still be useful, however the relative maturity of the field limits how accurately we can assess that.

lutusp 13y ago
> It's a semantic nit-pick about the definition of 'science'. It's more substantial than semantics -- without theory shaping and testing, an activity is not science. But let's test this idea scientifically -- let's say this isn't true, that an activity that only describes, that doesn't make an effort to explain, counts as science. Let's see where this takes us. Here we go: Let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist. Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no? Ask yourself what's wrong with this picture, and notice that the same thing is wrong with psychology — all description, no explanation, no established principles on which different psychologists agree, no effort to build consensus, and no unifying theories.
- oblique63 13y ago
  I don't entirely disagree, however the past thread I linked to makes me weary about pursuing this discussion further. The problem is that we are seriously limited in what we can actually do/use if we base psychology entirely on this premise. I mean this both conceptually and technologically. We haven't fully mapped out the brain, we don't know about all the neurotransmitters out there, and we don't even know what fMRI shows us exactly, so we gotta be realistic with our expectations given our current limitations. Likewise, we don't actually fully know how most psychoactive compounds work to produce the effects they do, much less 'designer medications'. This isn't a reason to dismiss their usefulness though. There's a difference between being 'limited', and being 'wrong'. You could've made a similar argument about physics back before we really understood the atom (again, due to limitations). Additionally, the notion of 'wrong' here is only relative to the philosophical theory of falsification, which is good, but has it's own set of gotchas and nuances that others have tried to address: http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Lakatos.html http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Lakatos.html http://philosophy.wisc.edu/forster/papers/Lakatos.htm http://philosophy.wisc.edu/forster/papers/Lakatos.htm http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/the-philosophy-of-paul-feyerabend/ http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/the-philosoph... http://andrewgelman.com/2004/10/14/bayes_and_poppe/ http://andrewgelman.com/2004/10/14/bayes_and_poppe/ So while good, this definition of science is still far from a stable building-block to deem all nonconforming studies unequivocally 'wrong'.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > The problem is that we are seriously limited in what we can actually do/use if we base psychology entirely on this premise. Yes, that's true, but current events suggest that the remedy is not to claim that psychology is scientific on dubious grounds, but instead to shift focus to neuroscience, see where a more biological approach will take us. This happens to be the NIMH director's view as well. > We haven't fully mapped out the brain, we don't know about all the neurotransmitters out there, and we don't even know what fMRI shows us exactly, so we gotta be realistic with our expectations given our current limitations. But that's not psychology, that's neuroscience. Psychology is the study of the mind, not the brain, and the mind is not accessible to brain scanners. > ... however the past thread I linked to makes me weary about pursuing this discussion further. Perfectly understandable. In any case, recent events like the NIMH director's decision to phase out the DSM make anything we choose to say rather unimportant.
- jessedhillon 13y ago
  You don't appear to know very much about either science as practiced, or the current state of psychological research. Just the idea that there is no room in science for making, repeating and reporting observations is wrong. Much of science is absent of grand attempts to explain observations in the context of known theories. Also, have you read the paper in question, or are you judging it from a press release and/or journalist's summary?
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > You don't appear to know very much about either science as practiced, or the current state of psychological research. False, I am very familiar with the current state of psychological research, and it would be more productive for you to address the topic. > Just the idea that there is no room in science for making, repeating and reporting observations is wrong. Yes, and therefore it's a good thing that I never said this anywhere, only you did. What I do say is that observations can only be a preliminary to science. Science requires us to propose a theory about those observations, a theory that can be empirically tested and potentially falsified, a theory that can produce consensus between different workers in the field. If we instead limit ourselves to observations and never try to craft a theory, we can accept any correlation as significant and call it science -- for example, I can shake a dried gourd over a cold sufferer and the cold will eventually go away. Have I cured the cold? Is that science? Much of modern psychological research is on a par with shaking a dried gourd over a cold sufferer and calling the outcome significant. For example, recent meta-analyses show that talk therapies are indistinguishable from each other and from the placebo effect. Based on current studies, no one can say that talk therapy is an example of the placebo effect, only that it's indistinguishable from it. Here is the conclusion of a recent psychology scandal: http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2012/11/final-report-stapel-affair-points-bigger-problems-social-psychology http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2012/11/final-repor... Quote: "In their exhaustive final report about the fraud affair that rocked social psychology last year, three investigative panels today collectively find fault with the field itself. They paint an image of a "sloppy" research culture in which some scientists don't understand the essentials of statistics, journal-selected article reviewers encourage researchers to leave unwelcome data out of their papers, and even the most prestigious journals print results that are obviously too good to be true." > Also, have you read the paper in question ... Of course. No theory, no science. Are you prepared to judge astrology to be a pseudoscience without reading every paper that's been published on the topic?

lutusp 13y ago

> It's a semantic nit-pick about the definition of 'science'. It's more substantial than semantics -- without theory shaping and testing, an activity is not science. But let's test this idea scientifically -- let's say this isn't true, that an activity that only describes, that doesn't make an effort to explain, counts as science. Let's see where this takes us. Here we go: Let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist. Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no? Ask yourself what's wrong with this picture, and notice that the same thing is wrong with psychology — all description, no explanation, no established principles on which different psychologists agree, no effort to build consensus, and no unifying theories.

oblique63 13y ago
I don't entirely disagree, however the past thread I linked to makes me weary about pursuing this discussion further. The problem is that we are seriously limited in what we can actually do/use if we base psychology entirely on this premise. I mean this both conceptually and technologically. We haven't fully mapped out the brain, we don't know about all the neurotransmitters out there, and we don't even know what fMRI shows us exactly, so we gotta be realistic with our expectations given our current limitations. Likewise, we don't actually fully know how most psychoactive compounds work to produce the effects they do, much less 'designer medications'. This isn't a reason to dismiss their usefulness though. There's a difference between being 'limited', and being 'wrong'. You could've made a similar argument about physics back before we really understood the atom (again, due to limitations). Additionally, the notion of 'wrong' here is only relative to the philosophical theory of falsification, which is good, but has it's own set of gotchas and nuances that others have tried to address: http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Lakatos.html http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/Lakatos.html http://philosophy.wisc.edu/forster/papers/Lakatos.htm http://philosophy.wisc.edu/forster/papers/Lakatos.htm http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/the-philosophy-of-paul-feyerabend/ http://coraifeartaigh.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/the-philosoph... http://andrewgelman.com/2004/10/14/bayes_and_poppe/ http://andrewgelman.com/2004/10/14/bayes_and_poppe/ So while good, this definition of science is still far from a stable building-block to deem all nonconforming studies unequivocally 'wrong'.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > The problem is that we are seriously limited in what we can actually do/use if we base psychology entirely on this premise. Yes, that's true, but current events suggest that the remedy is not to claim that psychology is scientific on dubious grounds, but instead to shift focus to neuroscience, see where a more biological approach will take us. This happens to be the NIMH director's view as well. > We haven't fully mapped out the brain, we don't know about all the neurotransmitters out there, and we don't even know what fMRI shows us exactly, so we gotta be realistic with our expectations given our current limitations. But that's not psychology, that's neuroscience. Psychology is the study of the mind, not the brain, and the mind is not accessible to brain scanners. > ... however the past thread I linked to makes me weary about pursuing this discussion further. Perfectly understandable. In any case, recent events like the NIMH director's decision to phase out the DSM make anything we choose to say rather unimportant.
jessedhillon 13y ago
You don't appear to know very much about either science as practiced, or the current state of psychological research. Just the idea that there is no room in science for making, repeating and reporting observations is wrong. Much of science is absent of grand attempts to explain observations in the context of known theories. Also, have you read the paper in question, or are you judging it from a press release and/or journalist's summary?
- lutusp 13y ago
  > You don't appear to know very much about either science as practiced, or the current state of psychological research. False, I am very familiar with the current state of psychological research, and it would be more productive for you to address the topic. > Just the idea that there is no room in science for making, repeating and reporting observations is wrong. Yes, and therefore it's a good thing that I never said this anywhere, only you did. What I do say is that observations can only be a preliminary to science. Science requires us to propose a theory about those observations, a theory that can be empirically tested and potentially falsified, a theory that can produce consensus between different workers in the field. If we instead limit ourselves to observations and never try to craft a theory, we can accept any correlation as significant and call it science -- for example, I can shake a dried gourd over a cold sufferer and the cold will eventually go away. Have I cured the cold? Is that science? Much of modern psychological research is on a par with shaking a dried gourd over a cold sufferer and calling the outcome significant. For example, recent meta-analyses show that talk therapies are indistinguishable from each other and from the placebo effect. Based on current studies, no one can say that talk therapy is an example of the placebo effect, only that it's indistinguishable from it. Here is the conclusion of a recent psychology scandal: http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2012/11/final-report-stapel-affair-points-bigger-problems-social-psychology http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2012/11/final-repor... Quote: "In their exhaustive final report about the fraud affair that rocked social psychology last year, three investigative panels today collectively find fault with the field itself. They paint an image of a "sloppy" research culture in which some scientists don't understand the essentials of statistics, journal-selected article reviewers encourage researchers to leave unwelcome data out of their papers, and even the most prestigious journals print results that are obviously too good to be true." > Also, have you read the paper in question ... Of course. No theory, no science. Are you prepared to judge astrology to be a pseudoscience without reading every paper that's been published on the topic?