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>> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") > That's not what falsifiable means. You truncated the original, cut out an essential word, t

by 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.

singingfish 13y ago
OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. The remainder of the discussion is quite tedious, and shows that the OP has a very confused notion of mind body separation (hint, by and large they are not, whether you're a dualist an epihenominist or something else - I tend to something else but wouldn't feel confident to write my viewpoint down). What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology. This could be OP's second point of confusion. Essentially the only time real experiemnts as opposed to quasi-experiments are possible in science is where a known physical quantity is already well understood (e.g. moles of Hydrogen, quanta of photons, metres of distance, joules of energy etc). Where complete control over a known physical quantity is not practical, the only possible experimental design is in fact a quasi experimental design. However, to claim that quasi experiments are not valid is to deny a large amount of scientific knowledge, and flies in the face of deductive logic. Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring. The discipline of psychology was the original field that enabled the types of statistical analysis that underpin much of the modern economy. Psychology provided the intellecutal basis of using single case studies (e.g patients with a rare or unique illness) to further scientific understanding. In psychology this resulted in much of our understanding of the functions of different parts of the brain prior to the development of neuroimaging. Finally, lots of concepts in computer science originate in psychology - heuristic being the one that comes to mind at the moment. My entire development methodology is based on the idea that human short term memory is fixed to 7±2 items (based on data from quasi-experimental studies). Thus when I am writing code my primary purpose is to only have to attend to 5 things at a time, at most, as this is the lower bound of the reliability of my short term memory.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. Pretend to be a scientist and post your evidence. Here's mine -- the director of the NIMH has recently ruled (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) that the DSM (psychology's "bible") may no longer be used as the basis of scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. The director went on to say: "The goal of this new manual, as with all previous editions, is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology. 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] There is often an embarrassing degree of self-reference in discussions where psychologists try to claim that psychology is a science. The defenders invariably see no need to produce evidence for their claim, as though evidence is irrelevant in a discussion of science. And for a typical psychologist, saying psychology is a science is expected to end a conversation, whereas for a scientist, that claim can only begin a conversation in which evidence rules. > Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring. Only if science isn't defined as it is in the law -- which it is. Science-defining laws are on the books to keep Creationism out of public school classrooms, and while crafting those laws with the assistance of expert witnesses, guess which non-negotiable criterion always appears in the final ruling? Falsifiability. Here is one such ruling (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) -- science must have these properties: 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. I bring up this law to make perfectly clear that falsifiability, empirical evidence, and the other standard requirements for science, are only red herrings to people who think they can define science any way they please. For a scientist, obviously this kind of argument is unnecessary -- they already understand what science requires. > What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology. Wait, what? Because one cannot design reliable experiments in psychology, therefore psychology is scientific? On what basis -- that real science is too difficult? > This could be OP's second point of confusion. The only confusion is yours.
bad_user 13y ago
My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world. At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false. When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future. Mental illnesses are very much real and because of that it is entirely possible to measure the effectiveness of a psychological treatment. The problem with many psychological treatments is the same problem we have with nutrition - doing studies is excruciatingly hard because the validity of a test is compromised if the patients aren't kept under observation 24/7, because patients have a tendency to lie or to forget, so short of keeping them locked in a cage for the next 10 years, we lack the capability of keeping them under observation and this is necessary to eliminate variables that could have an impact on the result. Doubly-blind tests are also excruciatingly hard sometimes - for example, in regards to nutrition, the only way one could conduct such a test would be to control the patients' basic senses. And in the future, we may be able to directly measure the body's reaction to a treatment, which would eliminate the need for A/B testing entirely. Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world. Not in science. In science, falsifiability means the failure of an empirical test, a failure that invalidates a claim. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability Quote: "The concern with falsifiability gained attention by way of philosopher of science Karl Popper's scientific epistemology "falsificationism". Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience. This is often epitomized in Wolfgang Pauli famously saying, of an argument that fails to be scientific because it cannot be falsified by experiment, "it is not only not right, it is not even wrong!"" [emphasis added] > At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false. No, falsifiability in science means that an empirical test -- a test against reality -- proves a claim to be false. In science, falsifiability is not about philosophy or rhetoric, it is about empirical tests. > When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future. In psychology, defined as study of the mind, none of those are falsifiable in a scientific sense, because the mind is not a source of empirical evidence. > The problem with many psychological treatments ... [etc.] Your paragraph explains why psychology is not and cannot be scientific. > Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable. On the contrary, that is exactly what it means. No objective empirical evidence on which similarly equipped observers can agree, ergo no falsifiability, ergo no science. In any case, falsifiability is only one missing property in psychology. Another is psychology's tendency to be satisfied to describe what it should be explaining. Are testable, empirical explanations required for science, or are descriptions adequate? To find out, read my description of a phony cure for the common cold posted above. It shows that explanations are a requirement for science, and to avoid all sorts of quackery.

by lutusp 13y ago

singingfish 13y ago

OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. The remainder of the discussion is quite tedious, and shows that the OP has a very confused notion of mind body separation (hint, by and large they are not, whether you're a dualist an epihenominist or something else - I tend to something else but wouldn't feel confident to write my viewpoint down). What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology. This could be OP's second point of confusion. Essentially the only time real experiemnts as opposed to quasi-experiments are possible in science is where a known physical quantity is already well understood (e.g. moles of Hydrogen, quanta of photons, metres of distance, joules of energy etc). Where complete control over a known physical quantity is not practical, the only possible experimental design is in fact a quasi experimental design. However, to claim that quasi experiments are not valid is to deny a large amount of scientific knowledge, and flies in the face of deductive logic. Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring. The discipline of psychology was the original field that enabled the types of statistical analysis that underpin much of the modern economy. Psychology provided the intellecutal basis of using single case studies (e.g patients with a rare or unique illness) to further scientific understanding. In psychology this resulted in much of our understanding of the functions of different parts of the brain prior to the development of neuroimaging. Finally, lots of concepts in computer science originate in psychology - heuristic being the one that comes to mind at the moment. My entire development methodology is based on the idea that human short term memory is fixed to 7±2 items (based on data from quasi-experimental studies). Thus when I am writing code my primary purpose is to only have to attend to 5 things at a time, at most, as this is the lower bound of the reliability of my short term memory.

lutusp 13y ago
> OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. Pretend to be a scientist and post your evidence. Here's mine -- the director of the NIMH has recently ruled (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) that the DSM (psychology's "bible") may no longer be used as the basis of scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. The director went on to say: "The goal of this new manual, as with all previous editions, is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology. 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] There is often an embarrassing degree of self-reference in discussions where psychologists try to claim that psychology is a science. The defenders invariably see no need to produce evidence for their claim, as though evidence is irrelevant in a discussion of science. And for a typical psychologist, saying psychology is a science is expected to end a conversation, whereas for a scientist, that claim can only begin a conversation in which evidence rules. > Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring. Only if science isn't defined as it is in the law -- which it is. Science-defining laws are on the books to keep Creationism out of public school classrooms, and while crafting those laws with the assistance of expert witnesses, guess which non-negotiable criterion always appears in the final ruling? Falsifiability. Here is one such ruling (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) -- science must have these properties: 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. I bring up this law to make perfectly clear that falsifiability, empirical evidence, and the other standard requirements for science, are only red herrings to people who think they can define science any way they please. For a scientist, obviously this kind of argument is unnecessary -- they already understand what science requires. > What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology. Wait, what? Because one cannot design reliable experiments in psychology, therefore psychology is scientific? On what basis -- that real science is too difficult? > This could be OP's second point of confusion. The only confusion is yours.

bad_user 13y ago

My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world. At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false. When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future. Mental illnesses are very much real and because of that it is entirely possible to measure the effectiveness of a psychological treatment. The problem with many psychological treatments is the same problem we have with nutrition - doing studies is excruciatingly hard because the validity of a test is compromised if the patients aren't kept under observation 24/7, because patients have a tendency to lie or to forget, so short of keeping them locked in a cage for the next 10 years, we lack the capability of keeping them under observation and this is necessary to eliminate variables that could have an impact on the result. Doubly-blind tests are also excruciatingly hard sometimes - for example, in regards to nutrition, the only way one could conduct such a test would be to control the patients' basic senses. And in the future, we may be able to directly measure the body's reaction to a treatment, which would eliminate the need for A/B testing entirely. Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.

lutusp 13y ago
> My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world. Not in science. In science, falsifiability means the failure of an empirical test, a failure that invalidates a claim. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability Quote: "The concern with falsifiability gained attention by way of philosopher of science Karl Popper's scientific epistemology "falsificationism". Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience. This is often epitomized in Wolfgang Pauli famously saying, of an argument that fails to be scientific because it cannot be falsified by experiment, "it is not only not right, it is not even wrong!"" [emphasis added] > At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false. No, falsifiability in science means that an empirical test -- a test against reality -- proves a claim to be false. In science, falsifiability is not about philosophy or rhetoric, it is about empirical tests. > When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future. In psychology, defined as study of the mind, none of those are falsifiable in a scientific sense, because the mind is not a source of empirical evidence. > The problem with many psychological treatments ... [etc.] Your paragraph explains why psychology is not and cannot be scientific. > Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable. On the contrary, that is exactly what it means. No objective empirical evidence on which similarly equipped observers can agree, ergo no falsifiability, ergo no science. In any case, falsifiability is only one missing property in psychology. Another is psychology's tendency to be satisfied to describe what it should be explaining. Are testable, empirical explanations required for science, or are descriptions adequate? To find out, read my description of a phony cure for the common cold posted above. It shows that explanations are a requirement for science, and to avoid all sorts of quackery.