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You make a valuable distinction; Kahneman did not win the Nobel for psychology, and in fact there is no such thing. But to call psychology a pseudoscience conf

You make a valuable distinction; Kahneman did not win the Nobel for psychology, and in fact there is no such thing. But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples.

lutusp 13y ago
> But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. It certainly doesn't call into question the definition of science -- that's well-established by a consensus among scientists. The consensus is secure enough that science is now written into law, for example laws meant to prevent Creationism from being taught as science in science classrooms. Here is an excerpt from one such law now on the books (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) (there are many): 1. It is guided by natural law; 2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; 3. It is testable against the empirical world; 4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and 5. It is falsifiable. Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. Therefore, based on society's accepted definition of science, psychology is not a science. This isn't remotely controversial, in fact society is moving away from psychology toward neuroscience as we speak. The director of the NIMH recently ruled that the DSM (psychology's "bible") can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. In his explanation (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) the director said: "While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity." "Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." [emphasis added] > In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples. Yes, but these are descriptions, not testable, falsifiable explanations. Science requires explanations, explanations that can be empirically tested and possibly falsified. But because this is a discussion of science, let's prove this point with a thought experiment -- 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?
- bad_user 13y ago
  > falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") That's not what falsifiable means. > 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. Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works. That statement, taken literally, is provably false, as sooner or later somebody will die even if you're shaking a dried gourd over his body. But lets say that you meant the cure improves the condition of those that suffer from common cold, or that simply we want to find out before anybody dies. Well, we can do doubly-blind A/B testing and measure several things, like the presence of the associated symptoms, its progression, the average duration and so on. And nowadays, any treatment must beat the placebo effect in order for it to be considered valid. But lets say that we couldn't determine if this particular cure is valid or not. It would still be falsifiable, because it's related to things that we'll be able to measure in the future, if we can't already - like the autoimmune system's response to this treatment.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    >> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") > That's not what falsifiable means. You truncated the original, cut out an essential word, then argued against the edited version. Here's what I said: > Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. [emphasis added] In point of fact, empirical, falsifiable evidence is the only legitimate basis for theories that should be discarded if reality disagrees, and on which the notion of falsifiability depends -- that's how it's defined. The meaning of falsifiability is that a reality test decides whether a given idea has merit, not philosophical weight or rhetorical argument. And if the reality test fails, a scientist discards the failed idea. A pseudoscientist may elect to discard reality instead. > Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works. Yes, and on that basis I can claim that my idea is falsifiable. But until I take the daring step of trying to explain what I have described, I haven't crossed the threshold of science. That's why I use this example -- it has empirical evidence, it is falsifiable, it is replicable by dispassionate third parties. It has everything that psychology recognizes as science, except the crucial element of theory, of explanation. Because psychology is satisfied to describe without making an effort to explain, so am I.

lutusp 13y ago

> But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. It certainly doesn't call into question the definition of science -- that's well-established by a consensus among scientists. The consensus is secure enough that science is now written into law, for example laws meant to prevent Creationism from being taught as science in science classrooms. Here is an excerpt from one such law now on the books (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) (there are many): 1. It is guided by natural law; 2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; 3. It is testable against the empirical world; 4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and 5. It is falsifiable. Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. Therefore, based on society's accepted definition of science, psychology is not a science. This isn't remotely controversial, in fact society is moving away from psychology toward neuroscience as we speak. The director of the NIMH recently ruled that the DSM (psychology's "bible") can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. In his explanation (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) the director said: "While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity." "Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." [emphasis added] > In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples. Yes, but these are descriptions, not testable, falsifiable explanations. Science requires explanations, explanations that can be empirically tested and possibly falsified. But because this is a discussion of science, let's prove this point with a thought experiment -- 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?

bad_user 13y ago
> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") That's not what falsifiable means. > 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. Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works. That statement, taken literally, is provably false, as sooner or later somebody will die even if you're shaking a dried gourd over his body. But lets say that you meant the cure improves the condition of those that suffer from common cold, or that simply we want to find out before anybody dies. Well, we can do doubly-blind A/B testing and measure several things, like the presence of the associated symptoms, its progression, the average duration and so on. And nowadays, any treatment must beat the placebo effect in order for it to be considered valid. But lets say that we couldn't determine if this particular cure is valid or not. It would still be falsifiable, because it's related to things that we'll be able to measure in the future, if we can't already - like the autoimmune system's response to this treatment.
- lutusp 13y ago
  >> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") > That's not what falsifiable means. You truncated the original, cut out an essential word, then argued against the edited version. Here's what I said: > Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. [emphasis added] In point of fact, empirical, falsifiable evidence is the only legitimate basis for theories that should be discarded if reality disagrees, and on which the notion of falsifiability depends -- that's how it's defined. The meaning of falsifiability is that a reality test decides whether a given idea has merit, not philosophical weight or rhetorical argument. And if the reality test fails, a scientist discards the failed idea. A pseudoscientist may elect to discard reality instead. > Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works. Yes, and on that basis I can claim that my idea is falsifiable. But until I take the daring step of trying to explain what I have described, I haven't crossed the threshold of science. That's why I use this example -- it has empirical evidence, it is falsifiable, it is replicable by dispassionate third parties. It has everything that psychology recognizes as science, except the crucial element of theory, of explanation. Because psychology is satisfied to describe without making an effort to explain, so am I.