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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

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.
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > 1) The DSM is controlled by psychiatry not psychology Actually, it's controlled by neither psychiatry nor psychology (but influenced by both groups). And it's being abandoned by the psychiatrists as we speak: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... > 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. No, that's false. As the above linked article shows, the complaint was that it's all symptoms with no root causes. Had there been a corpus of science being disregarded, surely someone would have mentioned it during the long DSM-5 editorial process. But there was no science whose absence they could complain about. > 3) The practice of clinical psychology != psychology. Do you suppose that a doctor can offer a clinical practice not backed up by research? No, (s)he cannot -- (s)he would be expelled from the field. The expulsion would be informed by clear science. This isn't true in psychology. The reason? There's no science to ignore. > 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. You're missing the point that what experimental psychologists do has no relevance to clinical psychologists, unlike the example of scientific fields, where every new scientific finding influences the entire field and other fields as well. Cosmologists study nature at the largest scales -- entire galaxies. Particle physicists study nature at the smallest scales -- quarks, smaller than atoms. But cosmologists and particle physicists work together, share findings, and attend each other's conferences. Why? Physics is a science. When cosmologists discovered dark matter, this immediately caught the attention of particle physicists, who are now embarked on a program to find out what kinds of particles make up dark matter. When particle physicists discovered that neutrinos have mass, this caught the attention of cosmologists, who realized this means they had to rewrite their theories of stellar evolution. If cosmologists were psychologists, of course this could never happen. After all, what do particle physicists know? The answer? They know science. Experimental psychologists ignore, or disown, clinical psychologists, and the reverse, regarding them as frauds. Why? Psychology isn't a science. Were it a science, validated empirical theories would unite the field, as quantum theory and relativity unite physicists, and evolution and cell biology unite biologists and doctors.
- vacri 12y ago
  Psychology is considerably broader than psychiatry, but really, you need to temper your frothing hate a bit. A year after a cutting edge change, and professionals haven't rearranged their lives around it? Welcome to the real world. Even in the fast-paced world of IT, new things are rarely put into production that fast. But even in the rest of medicine, it takes a long time. There are heaps of doctors out there that are practising decades-old medicine. I remember seeing Patch Adams speak about 15 years ago - he mentioned that when he did his medical degree, there was a total of one hour spent on preventative medicine, and that the curriculum hadn't changed to date, despite the immense amounts of research and cultural shift around it. Anyway, you'll find the same thing in plenty of fields - people doing practical science are usually a ways behind people doing theoretical science.
  - lutusp 12y ago
    > ... people doing practical science are usually a ways behind people doing theoretical science. Psychologist are doing neither practical nor theoretical science. Were this not so, if any useful science was coming out of psychological research or practice, it would long since have united the field behind theories that would forge a consensus about what the field means. This is true in physics, it's true in biology, it's true in geology, it's not true in psychology.

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.
- lutusp 12y ago
  > 1) The DSM is controlled by psychiatry not psychology Actually, it's controlled by neither psychiatry nor psychology (but influenced by both groups). And it's being abandoned by the psychiatrists as we speak: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia... > 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. No, that's false. As the above linked article shows, the complaint was that it's all symptoms with no root causes. Had there been a corpus of science being disregarded, surely someone would have mentioned it during the long DSM-5 editorial process. But there was no science whose absence they could complain about. > 3) The practice of clinical psychology != psychology. Do you suppose that a doctor can offer a clinical practice not backed up by research? No, (s)he cannot -- (s)he would be expelled from the field. The expulsion would be informed by clear science. This isn't true in psychology. The reason? There's no science to ignore. > 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. You're missing the point that what experimental psychologists do has no relevance to clinical psychologists, unlike the example of scientific fields, where every new scientific finding influences the entire field and other fields as well. Cosmologists study nature at the largest scales -- entire galaxies. Particle physicists study nature at the smallest scales -- quarks, smaller than atoms. But cosmologists and particle physicists work together, share findings, and attend each other's conferences. Why? Physics is a science. When cosmologists discovered dark matter, this immediately caught the attention of particle physicists, who are now embarked on a program to find out what kinds of particles make up dark matter. When particle physicists discovered that neutrinos have mass, this caught the attention of cosmologists, who realized this means they had to rewrite their theories of stellar evolution. If cosmologists were psychologists, of course this could never happen. After all, what do particle physicists know? The answer? They know science. Experimental psychologists ignore, or disown, clinical psychologists, and the reverse, regarding them as frauds. Why? Psychology isn't a science. Were it a science, validated empirical theories would unite the field, as quantum theory and relativity unite physicists, and evolution and cell biology unite biologists and doctors.
vacri 12y ago
Psychology is considerably broader than psychiatry, but really, you need to temper your frothing hate a bit. A year after a cutting edge change, and professionals haven't rearranged their lives around it? Welcome to the real world. Even in the fast-paced world of IT, new things are rarely put into production that fast. But even in the rest of medicine, it takes a long time. There are heaps of doctors out there that are practising decades-old medicine. I remember seeing Patch Adams speak about 15 years ago - he mentioned that when he did his medical degree, there was a total of one hour spent on preventative medicine, and that the curriculum hadn't changed to date, despite the immense amounts of research and cultural shift around it. Anyway, you'll find the same thing in plenty of fields - people doing practical science are usually a ways behind people doing theoretical science.
- lutusp 12y ago
  > ... people doing practical science are usually a ways behind people doing theoretical science. Psychologist are doing neither practical nor theoretical science. Were this not so, if any useful science was coming out of psychological research or practice, it would long since have united the field behind theories that would forge a consensus about what the field means. This is true in physics, it's true in biology, it's true in geology, it's not true in psychology.