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Alright, the 7-38-55 rule was created in the 1960s and is not given any credit by modern psychologists. Studies since have shown that while tone of voice and bo

by anbende 12y ago

Alright, the 7-38-55 rule was created in the 1960s and is not given any credit by modern psychologists. Studies since have shown that while tone of voice and body language convey a lot of meaning and in many cases more meaning than the semantic meaning of words, the ratio itself is an artifact of the artificiality of the setting in the original experiments. The cone of learning was created in the early part of this century by a scholar of education (not a psychologist) and was never tested psychologically. Are you really going to criticize a whole field by cherry-picking junk scientific claims made 50-100 years ago in some cases by non-psychologists?

lutusp 12y ago
> Are you really going to criticize a whole field by cherry-picking junk scientific claims made 50-100 years ago in some cases by non-psychologists? No, I would rather criticize an entire field based on what they're doing right now. The psychological professional societies abandoned Asperger Syndrome a year ago and removed it from the diagnostic manual, but this has had no effect on psychiatrists and psychologists, who continue to hand out Asperger Syndrome diagnoses -- now, today. The NIMH has decided to abandon the entire DSM, as a basis for scientific research proposals (it will remain as a diagnostic guide) for the simple reason that it has no scientific content, but this has had no effect on the activities of those who look on it as the field's scientific guiding light -- now, today. ADHD is now listed as the top misdiagnosed condition among children. It's estimated that a million U.S. children are misdiagnosed with ADHD, with all the attendant consequences (loss of self-esteem, a belief that one is defective or afflicted), because no one knows what ADHD is, and because the diagnoses are handed out based on the opinions of psychologists and the outcome of a questionnaire, on self-reporting -- not any kind of objective laboratory test -- now, today. Recovered Memory Therapy resulted in hundreds of bogus prosecutions and destroyed families in the 1990s -- not "50-100 years ago" as in your claim -- including such spectacular stories as Beth Rutherford, who claimed to have been raped by her father and forced to abort using a coat-hanger, a story that was swallowed whole by mental health professionals, until someone with a bit more common sense discovered she was a virgin. Therapists are free to offer recovered memory therapy if their clients want it, there's no professional or legal sanction for those who do so -- now, today. Example: http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Recovered_memory_therapy http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pag... How can this happen? How is it that so many practices can be offered with no scientific basis? Easily answered -- psychology is not a science. http://arachnoid.com/building_science http://arachnoid.com/building_science
- anbende 12y ago
  Asperger's was dropped from the DSM by the American Psychiatric Association - psychiatry is a professional degree within medicine. Psychology is a research discipline. Clinical psychology is a research discipline and a clinical (practice) degree. They are not the same thing. The NIMH has abandoned the DSM as a basis for psychological research (conducted by research psychologists), because it failed to incorporate the scientific evidence collected since the last DSM. The scientific evidence they ignored was collected by, you guessed it, research psychologists. You're right ADHD is a commonly misdiagnosed condition. One of the major problems is that it is often diagnosed in the doctor's office by MDs who have no psychological training. It is also mis-diagnosed by practitioners who should know better, and that's a problem, and one that results from diagnosis criteria that need to be updated according to the state of the modern psychological science, you're right. Yes, there is no objective laboratory test for ADHD, or major depression, or obsessive-compulsive disorder or bi-polar disorder or borderline or most psychological conditions not associated with some kind of brain injury. That does NOT mean that these aren't real conditions that have a real physiological basis. It merely means we don't have the ability to test for them physiologically yet. A symptoms-based approach to diagnosis isn't as good as a laboratory test, but unfortunately it's the best the current state of the science will support. That doesn't mean that the science is bad, only that our understanding is still young. Recovered memory therapy was debunked by psychologists who showed in laboratory experiments that false memories could be "recovered". The fact that practicing psychologists are able offer treatments that are not evidence-based is deplorable. I whole-heartedly agree with you. Please keep in mind, however, that this is not because there aren't treatments that are evidence-based, it's because the practice of therapy is an entrenched system that has it's own internal and external politics. And I hope you'll consider that psychological research and the practice of psychology are different things. And it's not just because practice doesn't necessarily follow the research. It's because psychology as a science studies how the mind functions and the majority of this is not related to mental illness. Cognitive psychology, language, neuropsychology, etc. are sub-disciplines that investigate aspects of mental functioning and are only related to clinical science in that they both study phenomena that occur in the brain.
  - lutusp 12y ago

by anbende 12y ago

lutusp 12y ago

> Are you really going to criticize a whole field by cherry-picking junk scientific claims made 50-100 years ago in some cases by non-psychologists? No, I would rather criticize an entire field based on what they're doing right now. The psychological professional societies abandoned Asperger Syndrome a year ago and removed it from the diagnostic manual, but this has had no effect on psychiatrists and psychologists, who continue to hand out Asperger Syndrome diagnoses -- now, today. The NIMH has decided to abandon the entire DSM, as a basis for scientific research proposals (it will remain as a diagnostic guide) for the simple reason that it has no scientific content, but this has had no effect on the activities of those who look on it as the field's scientific guiding light -- now, today. ADHD is now listed as the top misdiagnosed condition among children. It's estimated that a million U.S. children are misdiagnosed with ADHD, with all the attendant consequences (loss of self-esteem, a belief that one is defective or afflicted), because no one knows what ADHD is, and because the diagnoses are handed out based on the opinions of psychologists and the outcome of a questionnaire, on self-reporting -- not any kind of objective laboratory test -- now, today. Recovered Memory Therapy resulted in hundreds of bogus prosecutions and destroyed families in the 1990s -- not "50-100 years ago" as in your claim -- including such spectacular stories as Beth Rutherford, who claimed to have been raped by her father and forced to abort using a coat-hanger, a story that was swallowed whole by mental health professionals, until someone with a bit more common sense discovered she was a virgin. Therapists are free to offer recovered memory therapy if their clients want it, there's no professional or legal sanction for those who do so -- now, today. Example: http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Recovered_memory_therapy http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pag... How can this happen? How is it that so many practices can be offered with no scientific basis? Easily answered -- psychology is not a science. http://arachnoid.com/building_science http://arachnoid.com/building_science

anbende 12y ago
Asperger's was dropped from the DSM by the American Psychiatric Association - psychiatry is a professional degree within medicine. Psychology is a research discipline. Clinical psychology is a research discipline and a clinical (practice) degree. They are not the same thing. The NIMH has abandoned the DSM as a basis for psychological research (conducted by research psychologists), because it failed to incorporate the scientific evidence collected since the last DSM. The scientific evidence they ignored was collected by, you guessed it, research psychologists. You're right ADHD is a commonly misdiagnosed condition. One of the major problems is that it is often diagnosed in the doctor's office by MDs who have no psychological training. It is also mis-diagnosed by practitioners who should know better, and that's a problem, and one that results from diagnosis criteria that need to be updated according to the state of the modern psychological science, you're right. Yes, there is no objective laboratory test for ADHD, or major depression, or obsessive-compulsive disorder or bi-polar disorder or borderline or most psychological conditions not associated with some kind of brain injury. That does NOT mean that these aren't real conditions that have a real physiological basis. It merely means we don't have the ability to test for them physiologically yet. A symptoms-based approach to diagnosis isn't as good as a laboratory test, but unfortunately it's the best the current state of the science will support. That doesn't mean that the science is bad, only that our understanding is still young. Recovered memory therapy was debunked by psychologists who showed in laboratory experiments that false memories could be "recovered". The fact that practicing psychologists are able offer treatments that are not evidence-based is deplorable. I whole-heartedly agree with you. Please keep in mind, however, that this is not because there aren't treatments that are evidence-based, it's because the practice of therapy is an entrenched system that has it's own internal and external politics. And I hope you'll consider that psychological research and the practice of psychology are different things. And it's not just because practice doesn't necessarily follow the research. It's because psychology as a science studies how the mind functions and the majority of this is not related to mental illness. Cognitive psychology, language, neuropsychology, etc. are sub-disciplines that investigate aspects of mental functioning and are only related to clinical science in that they both study phenomena that occur in the brain.
- lutusp 12y ago