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This is just another example of psychologists trying to sound like scientists. Scientists quantify their claims, put forth physical rules and associated mathema

by lutusp 12y ago

This is just another example of psychologists trying to sound like scientists. Scientists quantify their claims, put forth physical rules and associated mathematics, after which measurements confirm or refute the quantified predictions. Psychologists express opinions, most of which don't lead to empirical or quantifiable predictions, but occasionally a psychologist, jealous of real scientists, will try to quantify an opinion, as in this case where 10,000 hours was attached to someone's viewpoint. Then, later, inevitably, other psychologists will argue against the earlier opinion, as thought the refutation was anything more than another opinion. What psychologists don't do is try to offer explanations, craft testable theories, about their observations, then subject the theories to empirical test. That would actually be science. > The 10,000 Hour Rule Is Not Real On the contrary! It is exactly as real as psychology is.

sirwitti 12y ago
You talk about quantifying claims and at the same time separate all psychologists from scientists. Maybe read again what you just posted...
- lutusp 12y ago
  > You talk about quantifying claims and at the same time separate all psychologists from scientists. Think about your argument. If I separate all psychologists from scientists, I'm not quantifying. If instead I say 50% of psychologists don't meet minimal scientific standards, that would be a quantification. Also, surely you realize what I'm saying is now the majority view on this topic, yes? Even with the highest-ranking psychiatrist in the country: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
  - anbende 12y ago
    Are you aware that psychology and psychiatry are not the same thing? Are you aware that the practice of psychology and psychological research are likewise not the same thing and that "practicing" psychologists and "research" psychologists are two very different professions? The primary claim levelled by the NIMH was that the DSM 5 failed to incorporate the mountain of psychological research that has been conducted in the last 20 years. This was done for a variety of reasons, none of which had anything to do with a lack of scientific research or evidence on the various conditions elucidated in the DSM (reasons like: "preserving continuity", "insurance concerns" and "ease of use"). The modern DSM is absolutely a problem, but it's not a problem because the science is crap. It's a problem, because the people in charge of the DSM (and yes there were a few psychologists there) didn't prioritize sound science.
    - analog31 12y ago
      >>> it's not a problem because the science is crap That's fair. But is the science any good? Have the last 20 years moved psychology towards what a physicist would recognize as science?
    - lutusp 12y ago
      > Are you aware that psychology and psychiatry are not the same thing? Of course, but when you say this, you're acknowledging that they have no common ground. What if I talked about Dark Matter and discussed the work of cosmologists and particle physicists, both of whom are contributing to the research. Would you object that I was unfairly or ignorantly conflating two different fields? No, you couldn't do that, because physics is a science, and sciences are united by theory. What unites psychiatry and psychology, two fields only seemingly joined by a common ground in human psychology? > The primary claim levelled by the NIMH was that the DSM 5 failed to incorporate the mountain of psychological research that has been conducted in the last 20 years. It's true that there's a mountain of psychological research. It's also true that it's not scientific enough to influence clinical practice. Director Insel's complaint wasn't about what's missing from the DSM, but what is present. Surely you don't think that clinical psychologists would ignore a clear scientific finding that would increase their effectiveness and their income? The reason this hasn't happened is because there are no such findings. > ... and that "practicing" psychologists and "research" psychologists are two very different professions? Yes, unlike scientists, all of whom study nature from different perspectives, and all of whom productively listen to each other. The reason that experimental psychologists, and clinical psychologists, ignore each other, is because there's no incentive to do otherwise -- there's no useful science coming out of experimental psychology, and there's no useful science coming out of clinical psychology. Try to imagine what would happen if a clinical psychologist, or an experimental psychologist, discovered something that would lead to an explanation (a theory) and survive repeated empirical test, and force consensus between different observers. It would produce something not present in psychology today -- it would produce a central, defining corpus of theory that would guide both research and practice. But there is no such finding, no such research, about the mind, because the mind is not -- cannot be -- a source of empirical evidence or theories, what science requires. > The modern DSM is absolutely a problem, but it's not a problem, because the science is crap. Yes, that is the problem with the DSM, and you don't need to take my word for this -- read the NIMH's views on this topic: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... " ... 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."
TeMPOraL 12y ago
Exactly. It's cargo-cult science. Attaching numbers and equations and quantifying things to look more credible. Math is supposed to be used to help focus and constrain thinking, not to make opinions sound More Serious. Sadly, I know a lot of people (mostly wanna-be-rich entrepreneurs, whose only skill seems to be the want to become rich) who buy into such psychology BS without second thought. Things like "cone of learning" or 7-38-55 rule, which sounds absurd if you think about it for more than a second. (then there's another part of the equation, i.e. "journalists" and business consultants stumbling over a paper with some numbers and specific claims, who then throw out constrains, exaggerate the conclusions and make a run for it)
- lutusp 12y ago
  > It's cargo-cult science. Yep. Some younger readers may not know what this refers to, so here's a quote from the original Feynman paper "Cargo Cult Science": "I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas — he's the controller — and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land." Full text: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
  - vacri 12y ago
    If you loathe psychology so much, why do you hang around on a site where (until fairly recently) about a third of articles were about psychology in some form? A/B testing, effective advertising, staff morale, avoiding burnout... all these sorts of things are psychology, and plenty of them have metrics.
Mvandenbergh 12y ago
It was a writer of popular entertainment who reduced a huge amount of research on expert performance to "it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert", that's then been further reduced by the filter of popular culture until all the caveats about deliberate practice and minimum talent levels have been stripped out. Psychologists absolutely try to offer explanations and craft testable theories, whether the nature of their work makes it quite as amenable to the methods of the hard sciences is of course a legitimate question.
- lutusp 12y ago
  > Psychologists absolutely try to offer explanations and craft testable theories ... This is absolutely false, contradicted by the history of psychology. In fact, the reason the DSM has been abandoned is specifically because it contains only descriptions (symptoms), no theories (explanations). Here's how the chairman of the NIMH explains his recent decision to refuse to accept the DSM as the basis for scientific research proposals: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... This doesn't mean psychologists are abandoning the DSM. Why should they? After all, they're still handing out Asperger Syndrome diagnoses, a year after this bogus condition was dropped from the DSM by their peers. This kind of guidance from the top, based on evidence or the lack of it, just doesn't matter in psychology, compared to what's popular with the clients. If a theoretical basis was required for a given practice, as you suggest, of course things would be different -- clinical practice would have to await the discovery of an established cause for any treated condition. But that is never true in psychology.
  - anbende 12y ago
    1) The DSM is controlled by psychiatry not psychology 2) One of the biggest criticisms the NIMH levied was that the DSM 5 failed to incorporate the scientific findings collected in the last 20 years by psychologists. 3) The practice of clinical psychology != psychology. Most psychologists do research. Clinicians practice. Unfortunately the two disciplines are both quite demanding, and it's generally not possible to do both at the same time.
anbende 12y ago
Wow. That's a rather bold claim to levy against an entire field without any evidence to back it up. The 10,000 rule was created by Malcom Gladwell a writer who has received wide criticism within psychology for making claims that go far beyond the empirical evidence. The linked article talks specifically about how the 10,000-rule was mis-attributed to a current psychologist's theory. While it's true that there are a lot of psychologists out there who are not doing good science, it's quite unfair to say that psychology doesn't "offer explanations" or "craft testable theories". Much of the work done in psychology is quite rigorous. Remember, cognitive psychology (brain imaging and reaction time data) and neuropsychology (brain imaging, rat and primate studies) are psychology too, and even personality and social psychology can be done with rigor and an eye toward the limits of what can be claimed based on the evidence collected. I know that psychology has been getting hammered in the popular press lately, but like most of what comes out of the popular press, the real situation is much more nuanced than what they report.
- lutusp 12y ago
  > That's a rather bold claim to levy against an entire field without any evidence to back it up. As to evidence, it's copious. The NIMH has recently abandoned the DSM as a basis for scientific research proposals for the simple reasons that it has no scientific content. Also, you need to understand that psychologists have the burden of evidence to produce positive evidence of robust scientific theories backed by empirical observations, not on their critics to prove a negative, which is what you're proposing. Proving a negative is an impossible burden (example: try disproving the existence of Bigfoot), and here it's misplaced in any case. > While it's true that there are a lot of psychologists out there who are not doing good science, it's quite unfair to say that psychology doesn't "offer explanations" or "craft testable theories". That's a simple fact, it's hardly controversial. Count the number of explanations (theories) offered by psychologists over the years that were empirical and testable, and that survived the subsequent tests -- or, for that matter, that were conclusively falsified using empirical evidence. There aren't any. > Remember, cognitive psychology (brain imaging and reaction time data) and neuropsychology ... "Neuropsychology" is a desperate attempt to conflate mind studies and brain studies. Psychology's subject is the mind. Neuroscience's subject is the brain and nervous system. There's no common ground. Many psychologists are calling themselves neuropsychologists now, aware that mind studies have been discredited on the basis that it's impossible to empirically study something that has no empirical existence, and that science requires empirical observations. To those who say that the mind is a manifestation of the brain's activity, that's an interesting philosophical position, but it can't be verified (or refuted) empirically, because the mind is not an empirical entity. This means all this talk about the life of the mind is philosophy, not science. It's certainly too soon to be offering mind treatments and claiming it as science, without any empirical evidence. This is how and why recovered memory therapy went off the rails -- there was no empirical basis to falsify any claim, which meant that any claim could be -- and was -- made: http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology/ http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology/

by lutusp 12y ago

sirwitti 12y ago

You talk about quantifying claims and at the same time separate all psychologists from scientists. Maybe read again what you just posted...

lutusp 12y ago
> You talk about quantifying claims and at the same time separate all psychologists from scientists. Think about your argument. If I separate all psychologists from scientists, I'm not quantifying. If instead I say 50% of psychologists don't meet minimal scientific standards, that would be a quantification. Also, surely you realize what I'm saying is now the majority view on this topic, yes? Even with the highest-ranking psychiatrist in the country: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...
- anbende 12y ago
  Are you aware that psychology and psychiatry are not the same thing? Are you aware that the practice of psychology and psychological research are likewise not the same thing and that "practicing" psychologists and "research" psychologists are two very different professions? The primary claim levelled by the NIMH was that the DSM 5 failed to incorporate the mountain of psychological research that has been conducted in the last 20 years. This was done for a variety of reasons, none of which had anything to do with a lack of scientific research or evidence on the various conditions elucidated in the DSM (reasons like: "preserving continuity", "insurance concerns" and "ease of use"). The modern DSM is absolutely a problem, but it's not a problem because the science is crap. It's a problem, because the people in charge of the DSM (and yes there were a few psychologists there) didn't prioritize sound science.
  - analog31 12y ago
    >>> it's not a problem because the science is crap That's fair. But is the science any good? Have the last 20 years moved psychology towards what a physicist would recognize as science?
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > Are you aware that psychology and psychiatry are not the same thing? Of course, but when you say this, you're acknowledging that they have no common ground. What if I talked about Dark Matter and discussed the work of cosmologists and particle physicists, both of whom are contributing to the research. Would you object that I was unfairly or ignorantly conflating two different fields? No, you couldn't do that, because physics is a science, and sciences are united by theory. What unites psychiatry and psychology, two fields only seemingly joined by a common ground in human psychology? > The primary claim levelled by the NIMH was that the DSM 5 failed to incorporate the mountain of psychological research that has been conducted in the last 20 years. It's true that there's a mountain of psychological research. It's also true that it's not scientific enough to influence clinical practice. Director Insel's complaint wasn't about what's missing from the DSM, but what is present. Surely you don't think that clinical psychologists would ignore a clear scientific finding that would increase their effectiveness and their income? The reason this hasn't happened is because there are no such findings. > ... and that "practicing" psychologists and "research" psychologists are two very different professions? Yes, unlike scientists, all of whom study nature from different perspectives, and all of whom productively listen to each other. The reason that experimental psychologists, and clinical psychologists, ignore each other, is because there's no incentive to do otherwise -- there's no useful science coming out of experimental psychology, and there's no useful science coming out of clinical psychology. Try to imagine what would happen if a clinical psychologist, or an experimental psychologist, discovered something that would lead to an explanation (a theory) and survive repeated empirical test, and force consensus between different observers. It would produce something not present in psychology today -- it would produce a central, defining corpus of theory that would guide both research and practice. But there is no such finding, no such research, about the mind, because the mind is not -- cannot be -- a source of empirical evidence or theories, what science requires. > The modern DSM is absolutely a problem, but it's not a problem, because the science is crap. Yes, that is the problem with the DSM, and you don't need to take my word for this -- read the NIMH's views on this topic: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... " ... 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."

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Exactly. It's cargo-cult science. Attaching numbers and equations and quantifying things to look more credible. Math is supposed to be used to help focus and constrain thinking, not to make opinions sound More Serious. Sadly, I know a lot of people (mostly wanna-be-rich entrepreneurs, whose only skill seems to be the want to become rich) who buy into such psychology BS without second thought. Things like "cone of learning" or 7-38-55 rule, which sounds absurd if you think about it for more than a second. (then there's another part of the equation, i.e. "journalists" and business consultants stumbling over a paper with some numbers and specific claims, who then throw out constrains, exaggerate the conclusions and make a run for it)

lutusp 12y ago
> It's cargo-cult science. Yep. Some younger readers may not know what this refers to, so here's a quote from the original Feynman paper "Cargo Cult Science": "I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas — he's the controller — and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land." Full text: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
- vacri 12y ago
  If you loathe psychology so much, why do you hang around on a site where (until fairly recently) about a third of articles were about psychology in some form? A/B testing, effective advertising, staff morale, avoiding burnout... all these sorts of things are psychology, and plenty of them have metrics.

Mvandenbergh 12y ago

It was a writer of popular entertainment who reduced a huge amount of research on expert performance to "it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert", that's then been further reduced by the filter of popular culture until all the caveats about deliberate practice and minimum talent levels have been stripped out. Psychologists absolutely try to offer explanations and craft testable theories, whether the nature of their work makes it quite as amenable to the methods of the hard sciences is of course a legitimate question.

lutusp 12y ago
> Psychologists absolutely try to offer explanations and craft testable theories ... This is absolutely false, contradicted by the history of psychology. In fact, the reason the DSM has been abandoned is specifically because it contains only descriptions (symptoms), no theories (explanations). Here's how the chairman of the NIMH explains his recent decision to refuse to accept the DSM as the basis for scientific research proposals: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... This doesn't mean psychologists are abandoning the DSM. Why should they? After all, they're still handing out Asperger Syndrome diagnoses, a year after this bogus condition was dropped from the DSM by their peers. This kind of guidance from the top, based on evidence or the lack of it, just doesn't matter in psychology, compared to what's popular with the clients. If a theoretical basis was required for a given practice, as you suggest, of course things would be different -- clinical practice would have to await the discovery of an established cause for any treated condition. But that is never true in psychology.
- anbende 12y ago
  1) The DSM is controlled by psychiatry not psychology 2) One of the biggest criticisms the NIMH levied was that the DSM 5 failed to incorporate the scientific findings collected in the last 20 years by psychologists. 3) The practice of clinical psychology != psychology. Most psychologists do research. Clinicians practice. Unfortunately the two disciplines are both quite demanding, and it's generally not possible to do both at the same time.

anbende 12y ago

Wow. That's a rather bold claim to levy against an entire field without any evidence to back it up. The 10,000 rule was created by Malcom Gladwell a writer who has received wide criticism within psychology for making claims that go far beyond the empirical evidence. The linked article talks specifically about how the 10,000-rule was mis-attributed to a current psychologist's theory. While it's true that there are a lot of psychologists out there who are not doing good science, it's quite unfair to say that psychology doesn't "offer explanations" or "craft testable theories". Much of the work done in psychology is quite rigorous. Remember, cognitive psychology (brain imaging and reaction time data) and neuropsychology (brain imaging, rat and primate studies) are psychology too, and even personality and social psychology can be done with rigor and an eye toward the limits of what can be claimed based on the evidence collected. I know that psychology has been getting hammered in the popular press lately, but like most of what comes out of the popular press, the real situation is much more nuanced than what they report.

lutusp 12y ago
> That's a rather bold claim to levy against an entire field without any evidence to back it up. As to evidence, it's copious. The NIMH has recently abandoned the DSM as a basis for scientific research proposals for the simple reasons that it has no scientific content. Also, you need to understand that psychologists have the burden of evidence to produce positive evidence of robust scientific theories backed by empirical observations, not on their critics to prove a negative, which is what you're proposing. Proving a negative is an impossible burden (example: try disproving the existence of Bigfoot), and here it's misplaced in any case. > While it's true that there are a lot of psychologists out there who are not doing good science, it's quite unfair to say that psychology doesn't "offer explanations" or "craft testable theories". That's a simple fact, it's hardly controversial. Count the number of explanations (theories) offered by psychologists over the years that were empirical and testable, and that survived the subsequent tests -- or, for that matter, that were conclusively falsified using empirical evidence. There aren't any. > Remember, cognitive psychology (brain imaging and reaction time data) and neuropsychology ... "Neuropsychology" is a desperate attempt to conflate mind studies and brain studies. Psychology's subject is the mind. Neuroscience's subject is the brain and nervous system. There's no common ground. Many psychologists are calling themselves neuropsychologists now, aware that mind studies have been discredited on the basis that it's impossible to empirically study something that has no empirical existence, and that science requires empirical observations. To those who say that the mind is a manifestation of the brain's activity, that's an interesting philosophical position, but it can't be verified (or refuted) empirically, because the mind is not an empirical entity. This means all this talk about the life of the mind is philosophy, not science. It's certainly too soon to be offering mind treatments and claiming it as science, without any empirical evidence. This is how and why recovered memory therapy went off the rails -- there was no empirical basis to falsify any claim, which meant that any claim could be -- and was -- made: http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology/ http://arachnoid.com/trouble_with_psychology/