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"Science appears to have a serious reproducibility problem. A four-year project by 270 researchers attempted to replicate 100 experiments published eight years ago in three prestigious psychology journals. Only 36 of those experiments produced similar results the second time around."
This is a problem. I think the bigger problem is the article calling this trouble in science. It assumes that psychology is scientific instead of demanding proof that it is.
I remember, way back in the 1970's, when I was in college echoes of the same thing. In my psychology class the professor said it is typical for 1/3 of psychological patients get better after treatment, 1/3 get worse and 1/3 stay the same. In another lecture the same professor said psychology should not be held to the same standards as other sciences since its numbers weren't as good. Almost all psychological data is expressed in ordinal numbers. Hard sciences can rely on cardinal numbers.
I've always thought the professors maintenance of psychology as a science in light of these deficiencies to be if not odd at least troublesome. Why should a field which eschews the standards of science be accounted one? Why should a treatment producing results indistinguishable from charlatanry not be so considered?
The years since them have removed all my doubts. Aside from obeisance why is psychology given any higher status than, say, fortune telling or tea leaf reading or witchcraft? These practitioners are as likely to be correct in their diagnoses and predictions as are psychologists and they're a lot less expensive.
Psychology is a very imperfect 'science'. I suppose because it deals with the mind (not the brain, per se) and with to a lesser degree emotions. These can fluctuate easily and are often inconsistent.
As to the rest of science, it is still imperfect as most if it is based on theory that sometimes is right and sometimes not. Global warming is a perfect example. Many good scientists will insist man is the sole cause for the recent global warming and other good ones point out we are also in the midst of a predictable cycle and they discount man's impact- and no one really knows for sure. They just like to think they do to protect their political party's point of view.
I mean, it seems as if every day a story leads with, "scientists used to believe...".
However, I still have a healthy respect for scientists as in a way they are pioneers of their field.
[By the way, I am NOT trying to draw a debate as to global warming. We already have 1,500 threads on that worn out subject. I was merely pointing out that good scientists can see the same data and draw different conclusions.]
Last edited by BLAZER PROPHET; 08-27-2015 at 03:12 PM..
I think psychology is a far more difficult area of study simply because humans are quite inconsistent and complicated....you can fault psychology but it's silly because you're really faulting humans for being unpredictable!
Of course other "hard sciences" such as medicine are CONSTANTLY finding that earlier results don't stand up to later experiments or that there are more variables involved that make the results more complicated than earlier thought. I guess we can also ridicule medicine then? But hey, human physiology is complicated, no?
Economics? Again...soft....Physics? We're far from unraveling the secrets of the universe.
So why pick on psychology - the science is only as good as the subject is simple.
"Science appears to have a serious reproducibility problem. A four-year project by 270 researchers attempted to replicate 100 experiments published eight years ago in three prestigious psychology journals. Only 36 of those experiments produced similar results the second time around."
This is a problem. I think the bigger problem is the article calling this trouble in science. It assumes that psychology is scientific instead of demanding proof that it is.
I remember, way back in the 1970's, when I was in college echoes of the same thing. In my psychology class the professor said it is typical for 1/3 of psychological patients get better after treatment, 1/3 get worse and 1/3 stay the same. In another lecture the same professor said psychology should not be held to the same standards as other sciences since its numbers weren't as good. Almost all psychological data is expressed in ordinal numbers. Hard sciences can rely on cardinal numbers.
I've always thought the professors maintenance of psychology as a science in light of these deficiencies to be if not odd at least troublesome. Why should a field which eschews the standards of science be accounted one? Why should a treatment producing results indistinguishable from charlatanry not be so considered?
The years since them have removed all my doubts. Aside from obeisance why is psychology given any higher status than, say, fortune telling or tea leaf reading or witchcraft? These practitioners are as likely to be correct in their diagnoses and predictions as are psychologists and they're a lot less expensive.
Great topic, and indeed a comtroversial one. I minored in psych in college and taught it in summer school h.s. and have always been a huge buff on the topic. I probably read more psych books than any other non-fiction topic. (Except for my profession in which my degree is also in, Sports and Exercise Science.) My wife was a Psychologist too, and we often discussed the whole "is it a real science or not?" topic. She used to always have a pretty good compromise opinion on this, saying, "It's a science, all right, but not a hard science. It's a soft science."
To this I think I agree. Everything you said in your OP is true, but we must remember that Psychology and Psychiatry (there IS a difference) have both come a long way. Not so long ago, before the advent of psychotropic medications, a violent or otherwise hard to control psychotic--or at least a person deemed to be such--would routinely get frontal lobotomies! We're talking up until the early 1970s or so! A mere generation ago.
But now with all those meds that can turn a frenetic tazmanian devil into a docile lamb (LOL) those things are a thing of the past. And one would have to admit that the science of creating those meds, which is chemistry and bio-chemistry, IS a hard science in any book.
So too are all those new brain-scanning technologies, like PET scans and fMRI's and EEC's. Nothin'' soft about that science! (And for my money, these hold maybe the biggest promise of ALL methodologies for diagnosing and treating mental illness.)
But sure, the therapy is "soft." There are different schools of it, from Behaviorist to Gestalt to CBT and not one has been proven to be the best. I think different situations call for different methods. This is "soft." My wife's chosen methodology was what the shrinks call "eclectic" meaning she used different ones that she felt the given patient merited and would most likely benefit from.
Most of you reading this probably know this, but its worth mentioning how much the field has changed in regards to its practitioners. Long gone are the Freudian days where Psychiatrists actually did the therapy sessions with the patients. Now they (whom are really MD's) basically just prescribe medication. It's the Ph.D's Psychologists, like my wife, and sometimes the MA's who do the down in the trenches therapy. All MD's have these guys as part of their staff, so if you go to a Psychiatrist and get your meds but also want some Therapy (bring your checkbook!) they will refer you to one of their staff.
So...overall, I can see both sides of the argument: "Science or NOT a Science" but I would go with the "Soft Science" moniker, as I think it is most accurate and it's overly harsh to write-off all of Psychiatry and Psychology as psuedo-science.
An addendum to my above OP. Moments after writing it I stumbled upon a post on another thread over in the Science forum which spoke of new Nueroscience technology which now makes it possible for a paralyzed person to control robotic prosthetic limbs with only signals from his brain. That is, from thinking about moving his legs or arms, in much the same way we do it naturally with our real limbs.
Thus. I think it is fair to say that Neuro-science is a part of Psychology, since it often--mostly?--deals with the workings of the human mind and brain, and NS is decidedly a HARD science, that Psychology/Psychiatry has made even more strides to be elevated to the realm of Real Science.
I think psychology is a far more difficult area of study simply because humans are quite inconsistent and complicated....you can fault psychology but it's silly because you're really faulting humans for being unpredictable!
Of course other "hard sciences" such as medicine are CONSTANTLY finding that earlier results don't stand up to later experiments or that there are more variables involved that make the results more complicated than earlier thought. I guess we can also ridicule medicine then? But hey, human physiology is complicated, no?
Economics? Again...soft....Physics? We're far from unraveling the secrets of the universe.
So why pick on psychology - the science is only as good as the subject is simple.
Excellent points. People always pick on behavioral medicine. From allegations of disability fraud to flat out "it's all bunk." Many just declare "I don't see it so I can't believe it." Ironically, many of these people *do* believe in God, afterlife, etc. It's like some just scapegoat psychology as an excuse to complain about something.
It's true that the science has not yet caught up in terms of other fields of medicine, but that's not the flaw of the field as a whole. It's because most of the research comes from universities disconnected from actual clinical practice or drug companies only. We aren't that far removed from when these patients were locked up and forgotten about.
And yet it's not 1970 anymore. I would think that today the improvement rate is better than "1/3" but maybe not. There are some rare and deadly cancers with worse stats then that and yet why are we not attacking oncology as "witchcraft?" Why not attack geriatric or neurological medicine because there is no cure for dementia, parkinson, ALS, cerebral palsy, etc?
I'm sure someone will start in soon with "the history of psychology" and all of its mistakes such as lobotomies, "refrigerator mothers" causing autism, homosexuality, etc. Yet no one ever speaks or thinks of the misnomer history of other sciences.
In the 1990s, a doctor scolded me for cutting a mole off me because I "could get cancer." Totally false. Do I today condemn all dermatologists? Of course not.
There was a time that doctors recommend cigarettes for asthma. Do we still hold cardiovascular docs with as much disdain as psychologists and psychiatrists? Nope.
Advances are made in every field everyday. We are not going to advance psychology without better understanding of the brain's relation to behavior. In this sense, the field is really *just* getting started.
Great topic, and indeed a comtroversial one. I minored in psych in college and taught it in summer school h.s. and have always been a huge buff on the topic. I probably read more psych books than any other non-fiction topic. (Except for my profession in which my degree is also in, Sports and Exercise Science.) My wife was a Psychologist too, and we often discussed the whole "is it a real science or not?" topic. She used to always have a pretty good compromise opinion on this, saying, "It's a science, all right, but not a hard science. It's a soft science."
To this I think I agree. Everything you said in your OP is true, but we must remember that Psychology and Psychiatry (there IS a difference) have both come a long way. Not so long ago, before the advent of psychotropic medications, a violent or otherwise hard to control psychotic--or at least a person deemed to be such--would routinely get frontal lobotomies! We're talking up until the early 1970s or so! A mere generation ago.
But now with all those meds that can turn a frenetic tazmanian devil into a docile lamb (LOL) those things are a thing of the past. And one would have to admit that the science of creating those meds, which is chemistry and bio-chemistry, IS a hard science in any book.
So too are all those new brain-scanning technologies, like PET scans and fMRI's and EEC's. Nothin'' soft about that science! (And for my money, these hold maybe the biggest promise of ALL methodologies for diagnosing and treating mental illness.)
But sure, the therapy is "soft." There are different schools of it, from Behaviorist to Gestalt to CBT and not one has been proven to be the best. I think different situations call for different methods. This is "soft." My wife's chosen methodology was what the shrinks call "eclectic" meaning she used different ones that she felt the given patient merited and would most likely benefit from.
Most of you reading this probably know this, but its worth mentioning how much the field has changed in regards to its practitioners. Long gone are the Freudian days where Psychiatrists actually did the therapy sessions with the patients. Now they (whom are really MD's) basically just prescribe medication. It's the Ph.D's Psychologists, like my wife, and sometimes the MA's who do the down in the trenches therapy. All MD's have these guys as part of their staff, so if you go to a Psychiatrist and get your meds but also want some Therapy (bring your checkbook!) they will refer you to one of their staff.
So...overall, I can see both sides of the argument: "Science or NOT a Science" but I would go with the "Soft Science" moniker, as I think it is most accurate and it's overly harsh to write-off all of Psychiatry and Psychology as psuedo-science.
Even in the 70's the distinction between psychiatrists and psychologist was clear. Even then the former had to be MDs and performed medicinely oriented therapies. And the advances since then have been profound and widely appreciated. Abuses and lapses get the most attention but psychotherapeutic drugs have rescued many from lives in institutions or worse.
And I'd count psychiatry among the hard sciences in the same sense that oncology is. Not science really but related to science the same way engineering is to physics.
Psychologists were always identified with talking therapies, even in the 70's. At the time however, the air hadn't come out of the balloon. Dr. Phil wasn't on anyones horizon.
Psychology has been left behind. Its great discoveries have turned out to be empty night. It holds a popular status so out of proportion to its achievements, many or most of which have actually been failures or worse. How many people have lost their lives because psychological testimony was allowed in court? How many people have looked to psychology with vain hope while their conditions worsened? Maybe they could have found help elsewhere if psychology's promise hadn't been so loudly trumpeted everywhere.
I think of Benjamin Spock and the generations of self-indulgence he fostered. Not only is there no going back, there's not even any looking back.
In my opinion the writings of Freud and Maslow and the rest should battle for students attention in the company of thinkers like Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche. Let them compete with the real explorers and explainers of the human soul. Now they enjoy the safety of their own sandbox where they only have each other to compete with.
Even in the 70's the distinction between psychiatrists and psychologist was clear. Even then the former had to be MDs and performed medicinely oriented therapies. And the advances since then have been profound and widely appreciated. Abuses and lapses get the most attention but psychotherapeutic drugs have rescued many from lives in institutions or worse.
And I'd count psychiatry among the hard sciences in the same sense that oncology is. Not science really but related to science the same way engineering is to physics.
Psychologists were always identified with talking therapies, even in the 70's. At the time however, the air hadn't come out of the balloon. Dr. Phil wasn't on anyones horizon.
Psychology has been left behind. Its great discoveries have turned out to be empty night. It holds a popular status so out of proportion to its achievements, many or most of which have actually been failures or worse. How many people have lost their lives because psychological testimony was allowed in court? How many people have looked to psychology with vain hope while their conditions worsened? Maybe they could have found help elsewhere if psychology's promise hadn't been so loudly trumpeted everywhere.
I think of Benjamin Spock and the generations of self-indulgence he fostered. Not only is there no going back, there's not even any looking back.
In my opinion the writings of Freud and Maslow and the rest should battle for students attention in the company of thinkers like Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche. Let them compete with the real explorers and explainers of the human soul. Now they enjoy the safety of their own sandbox where they only have each other to compete with.
Ahh..you're going back too far by saying that in the 70s MD's didn't do much therapy. In that decade it was still quite common for Psychiatrists to offer therapy to their clients instead of just prescribing meds. Too, that decade saw an up-tick in the popularity of Jungian and to a slightly lesser extent, but still an uptick, in Freudian Psychoanalysis. Many clients were doing Dream Analysis with their shrinks in the 70s too. (A practice which goes with Jungian, who was a big believer in all that stuff, the symbolism, the unconscious, the Collective Archetypes, etc. (In fact those beliefs of his are among the primary reasons for the split between him and Freud, who thought a lot of that was BS. LOL)
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Why not attack geriatric or neurological medicine because there is no cure for dementia, parkinson, ALS, cerebral palsy, etc?
