Note: Because my psychology correspondence has gradually evolved toward offering people advice, I want to say I am not a psychologist and any advice I offer is based only on common sense and life experience. I think most educated readers will accept this.
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Hold on!
Thankyou for your web site, I have enjoyed reading your articles, and I absolutely agree with you on the Microsoft issue. Just a point on psychology though, I do agree with your fundamental telling of what science is, and some of your comments about psychology and scientific theory. Firtly, you appear to be only addressing mental heatlh an assuming that it represents all of psychology.
No, I don't say or imply that. Through the example of clinical human psychology I show that psychology itself doesn't bear scientific fruit. Each field based in science has to be able to show results, both as public validation of its theories and methods and as a form of internal evidence. In shaping theory, physicists must eventually be able to make a prediction that is followed by an observation. For human psychology, a prediction about the field's chosen topic must eventually be followed by repeatable confirming evidence. That is why I chose this approach — there is no repeatable, reliable, testable content in human clinical psychology.
Psychoanalytic theory, for example, isn't even taught on many psych programmes or only as an example of how not to do scientific
experiemtation.
Yes, which is why I didn't dwell on this aspect of psychology — even psychologists openly acknowledge the barrenness of this area, so there is no point in belaboring it. But as to clinical practice, the practice that ought to be informed by theory, that is a different story.
Second, no subject is a science ...
Physics is a science. Mathematics is a science. Your argument reduces to saying that unscientific fields are not sciences. I think we can agree that fields that are entirely reliant on scientific methods for their theories and results are ... sciences.
... it is about the degree to which scientific method can be applied to it that matters. So physics comes out tops and english comes out bottom.
Psychology, sociology, and astrology come out at the bottom — all repeatedly make claims they cannot prove. English is amenable to lexical analysis, for example in gathering evidence that Shakespeare did or did not write the plays attributed to him. This ranks English above human clinical psychology, because (a) tearing books apart has no ethical dimension, and (b) the nature of the evidence is much better than that available to a practitioner of human clinical psychology.
Psychology has a multitude of sub-divisions, ranging from cognitive science/AI or bio-physiology thrugh to some very wooly, existential stuff.
Until theory is followed by repeatable evidence, until a psychologist can assert and prove that a specific recovered memory is bogus and some John Doe was jailed for no reason, it is all "very wooly, existential stuff." But this is not the case. Human psychology has the social position and responsibilities of a science but does not have the substance.
Scientific method is as applicable to some of these areas as it is in pure physics.
Yes. Unfortunately, my topic was human clinical psychology, a field bereft of scientific evidence or methods, for a number of reasons including ethical ones.
Third, understanding humans requires the full breadth of all our subjects, scientific or otherwise.
My article deals with the fact that psychology tries to present itself as a science, to the degree that courts of law rely on psychological expert testimony to decide peoples' fates. Your riposte in essence says that psychology relies for its meaning on things outside psychological theory. But I think the above resulted from carelessness, not intent, because science doesn't work this way.
Psychology is not a discipline that can be dichotomised into either science or not science (art, as some would have it).
Hold on. Now you are defending one point of my article, that psychology has no specific theoretical content. Psychology is not a science, it possesses no central body of theory, which is why these other areas creep in unnoticed and uninvited. We appear to be in agreement.
Any psychologists real focus is to make meaningful sense out of chaos
And they cannot do this, because human psychology has no testable content, either because of the obvious ethical issues, or because the experiments fail to produce anything repeatable.
- sometimes it is appropriate to use a scientific approach (e.g. in the lab) and at other times to develop expertise in helping others interpret their values and meaning in life, whether in mental health, work or family.
My article is solely meant to show that human psychology is not a science, and is about as effective as astrology in dealing with matters of fact as opposed to opinion. You are now reduced to offering agreements.
Fourth and last - just because a drug can treat e.g. depression does not mean cured, or that withholding therapy automatically means eventual self-cure (thats a very bad understanding of limited research).
Be that as it may, since I never tried to make these points, you have now left any part of my article, and therefore the conversation. In any case, the argument deserves to be turned on its head: in controlled, repeatable scientific experiments, psychology has not shown that its treatments are better than no treatment.
For example, some people with post-traumatic stress disorder do get well without treatment - but many who do not receive appropriate treatment not only live a lifetime with the psychological consequences, they also go on to develop other problems that have a terrible effect on their lives.
And the testable correlation with psychological treatment is nonexistent. You posed the above argument as though the connection with psychological treatment was obvious.
And despite your comments about the DSM, we know about it's limitations extremely well and know how to work with them.
1. If a scientist said this about a scientific textbook — "We know about its limitations and we know how to work with them" — he would be laughed out of his field. When something like this happens in science, the textbook is discarded along with its defects.
2. What? When did this discussion become a matter of "we"? If you intend to post and pose as a psychologist, you need to introduce yourself as such, not slip in a familial "we" late in the discussion. Surely you realize this.
Please be careful -
I promise to be as careful as the psychological expert witnesses who, through lying in court, caused many people to be jailed for nonexistent crimes. The standard of responsibility has been set by psychologists. I am not under a greater burden, but I accept one by pointing out the poor quality of the evidence. This is something psychologists should be doing, were it not for the issue of vested interest.
to non-psychologists you paint a convincing picture.
To non-psychologists I explain the same facts you appear to be in agreement with.
As a psychologist ...
This should have been the first line in your post, not nearly the last.
I can understand your POV and in some ways agree, however the article is somewhat biased and lacking in depth.
I would have written a deep article, but to do so, I would have had to
choose a field with some depth. Examples:
A Calculus primer
Why is the sky dark at night?
The originator of the above message, a psychology Ph.D., replied to the above by asking what academic standing I had to criticize psychology. Those schooled in science will recognize this tactic as "argumentum ad verecundiam" or "argument from authority", a logical error that can have no place in a scientific debate. I pointed this out to the correspondent, who then abandoned any pretense of addressing the topic and attempted to defend clinical psychology as a non-science.
Science is Evil
In response to Is Psychology A Science ... Wow! I do not know why you wrote this article but you obviously have it in you to criticise psychology.
Translation: I have legitimate grounds for asserting that clinical psychology (1) is not a science but (2) is in a position of authority that must be reserved for disciplines grounded in science. And that I can express those grounds clearly. So far, so good.
I had the patience to read your thing fully, I hope you will have the patience to read this fully in return.
I have only one ground rule, based in fairness and a desire not to waste my time: I will read what you have to say in reply to my article until you completely abandon the article's topic.
Between men of science who share ideas. Yes, I am a psychologist.
You cannot be both a scientist and a clinical psychologist, at least not in the way the latter is practiced in the U.S.
Well, now I read the story of Jim and his narcissitic mom and I understand better your angle.
"My angle?" This treads close to the idea that personal motivations are more important than evidence. My article presents the evidence, and in fairness you should discipline yourself in the same way.
Still, I feel you are throwing the baby with the bathwater.
How does this address the question of whether psychology is a science? I don't criticize art because it is not a science — it doesn't have to be, and no one expects or requires it. Art functions just fine without a scientific basis. On the other hand, artists don't put people in jail by offering bogus expert testimony, while clinical psychologists do. To bear this burden of social responsibility, psychology would have to be a science, and because it is not, society has misplaced its trust.
I'm not throwing out the baby, I'm throwing out the bathwater.
Einstein was a great scientist but his work did enable atomic war.
Please try to think more deeply. The fact that scientists produced atomic weapons only proves that science is more effective than rain dances or talk therapy. Scientists also produced all the vaccines ever invented, as well as the idea for a vaccine. Vaccines have saved far more lives than atomic weapons have taken. It seems you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Any form of science is dangerous.
Okay, by turning to a sophomoric criticism of science, you have entirely abandoned the topic "Is Psychology a Science?" and there is little point in seeing where you wander from here. Science is dangerous because it works. Psychology is dangerous because it doesn't. But you cannot produce a vaccine using psychology.
There are charlatans in every field and people who will misuse any form of authority. It does not make it any less science.
Yes, it does — it means exactly that. Fields where charlatanism prevails over evidence are not scientific, because science relies on evidence, not persuasion. If you see a public discipline that is ruled by charlatanism, by false ideas, it is ipso facto not a science.
At this point it is abundantly clear that you do not understand science.
Any science answers the easy questions first. Psychology maybe psychology does not know what to do with Asperger`s syndrome now.
In that case, it is too soon for the practitioners of psychology to be offering bogus diagnoses and treatments for a condition that hasn't been studied well enough to determine what it is, what causes it, and what can be done about it. If psychology were a science, its practitioners would be studying Asperger's in laboratories, rather than telling parents their children have it on slim to nonexistent grounds.
Maybe Asperger`s syndrome is just a societal misuse of psychology and is not a diagnosis. Who knows?
Honest to God. "Who knows?" is not a scientific question and you are no longer addressing anything resembling the topic. In fact it is clear you don't have a coherent position, and I've let you ramble on too long.
To address scientific questions, you must understand science, and you very clearly do not. As many correspondents have done, you have abandoned any pretense of addressing the original question "Is Psychology a Science?" and proceeded to defend psychology as a non-science.
No one seems to be getting this, so I will say it again. I am not criticizing clinical psychology for what it is, but because of what it falsely pretends to be: a science.
Clinical psychology cannot bear its present burden of responsibility as a science, because it is not a science. Those who think otherwise generally fall into the category of people not qualified to distinguish science from superstition.
This correspondent, a psychology Ph.D., replied to this exchange a total of nine times (without benefit of replies from me), revealing among other things his ignorance of the distinction between correlation and causation (of the "she had therapy, and she got better!" variety). His messages gradually decreased in logical content and increased in hostility, until I finally and reluctantly barred him from this site. In other words, it was an exchange with which I am all too familiar, between someone who thinks a certain way and someone who feels a certain way.
You're totally wrong
From a self-identified psychology Ph.D.:
Science is a method and those who use it are scientists.
Very misleading. This is like saying people who breathe are all pulmonary specialists. Pulmonary specialists also breathe, but breathing is not limited to them.
In point of fact, science is the moral property of all thinking people. It is not the private domain of scientists, and science is not a priestly order.
You, like many, take pot shots,
Prove it. Use evidence. That way, your ignorance of science will immediately become apparent.
make eclectic complaints to suit your own purposes.
Same reply. Your message contains no evidence to support its claims, therefore you are reduced to posting contentless arguments.
When I directly quote the head of research for DSM-IV [the "Bible" of clinical psychology] as he criticizes clinical psychologists' lack of intellectual rigor, does that count as an "eclectic complaint" to suit my own purposes?
By your reasoning astronomy is not a "hard" science.
That is your "reasoning," not mine, and you offer no evidence to support it. Also, you simply got this wrong — the original objection was made against cosmology, not astronomy. Astronomy is well-supported by observational evidence.
By the way, it stems from astrology.
Only in the same way that chestnut horses stem from horse chestnuts. In point of fact, astronomy does not "stem" from astrology, it contradicts it.
You do not stick to your own task ...
Prove this using reason and evidence.
...if you did you would have to conclude that psychology is a science,
No, as a matter of fact, clinical psychology is not a science, something that honest psychologists readily acknowledge.
many other scientists agree
"Many other scientists"? This "argument" of yours argues from authority rather than evidence, a logical gaffe that first-year science students are taught to avoid.
and include it's findings in their knowledge base.
Non sequitur. The ravings of lunatics are included in someone's scientific data base, but this doesn't make the ravings scientific.
There is much I find wrong with psychology (especially those who practice it)none--the-less it is a science
Prove it using the methods of science. I know you are manifestly unqualified to accomplish this, but as a matter of principle you need to realize you cannot defend any of your claims.
and you, with your extroidinary claims
1. Hmm. Another psychology Ph.D. who cannot spell "extraordinary".
2. The claims I make are gleaned from the rich technical literature on this topic, claims demonstrated in many studies both inside and outside the field of clinical psychology, and I provide a reference list with my article for those who care to examine the original evidence.
would be on the defensive when taking this position.
"Would be"? I presented the position, and then I defended it using the standard evidence, evidence that is part of technical and legal literature. I am hardly the only scientist to make this determination, as you would know if you bothered to educate yourself on this topic.
Better evidence is needed.
Since you are ignorant of the existing evidence, you are not qualified to make this statement. Better evidence is welcome, but the existing evidence is excellent.
To support your idea you would need to take on some of the contributions by psychology that have been accepted in the sciences
There are few such contributions. Science has strict evidentiary rules that clinical psychology cannot meet (as does law). The "contributions" you describe primarily represent raw data, not finished theories. If science studies UFO abduction stories, does that make the stories scientific?
and then show that all these other scientists were wrong
"All these other scientists." You are again arguing from authority rather than evidence, an embarrassing beginner's gaffe. Science is not a popularity contest, it is a field where evidence means everything and authority means nothing. The largest amount of scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific evidence.
When Nobel Prizewinner Linus Pauling touted the virtues of vitamin C against the common cold, scientists said, "Show us the evidence," just as though he were a student. That is how science works.
-- an insurmountable task.
To engage in a scientific debate, you must understand how science works, and you do not. According to your arguments, you think science is kind of a popularity contest where scientists vote for ideas they think are cool.
Your message contains no scientific reasoning or evidence of any kind. Instead, it relies on hand-waving arguments like "all these other scientists", arguments that would be rejected by first-year science students because they represent one or another elementary logical error.
In other words, you are a typical psychologist. Rather than being part of the solution, you are part of the problem. If you expected to make a positive contribution to an embarrassing field, you would first have to learn how science works.
This correspondent replied, explaining that my use of scientific reasoning was a "preference," as though there were any number of equally valid ways to process the question under discussion. He said, not once but several times, "If you prefer to use scientific reasoning to argue then use the methods of science." He then proceeded to abandon those methods.
It was while reading his reply that I recognized the problem: this correspondent is a post-modernist, that is to say, someone who believes there are no objective facts or methods to establish facts. To a post-modernist, there is only opinion, and everyone has one.
In other words, if you say psychology is a science, then it is, but if you say it isn't, then it isn't. Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, with individuals like these representing psychology's interests, it isn't.
It's a science!
From a practicing psychotherapist:
First, a little introduction. I do not usually belabour my qualifications so, but it seems that although you reject argumentum ad verecundiam, you are inclined to view responses from those with qualifications in psychology as suspect.
No, I regard an appeal to authority as suspect, as all scientists do. You have just made your first misstep.
[ List of qualifications deleted ]
Now to the substance of this reply: Your article ends with a condemnation of psychology in general terms and with the more specific statement that "psychology and psychiatry have never been based in science." That claim is demonstrably false.
I am perpetually amazed by scientific illiterates who think a phrase like "demonstrably false" might be a suitable way to end a conversation, when in point of fact, among scientists it can only begin one. Here is the evidence that you are wrong:
Clinical psychology is not based in science, for the reason that it does not possess the primary trait that sets scientific theories apart from ordinary activities, that of falsifiability.
Without explicit, testable theoretical statements, there can be no tests. Without tests, there can be no possibility of falsification. Without falsification, there can be no basis for rejecting anything anyone cares to say. That is the present status of clinical psychology. That is why psychological theories come and go over time without any of them being explicitly proven false.
To avoid a long and pointless discussion, I ask that you learn what science is before trying to go on.
Freud listened credulously to the reports of his female patients as though they were reports of fact, until one of his friends was accused of improper sexual behavior. Then he invented "female hysteria" as a blanket explanation for all such reports from women. He could do this because what he practiced was not a science. It is still not a science.
To reach this conclusion, you establish a standard that is of questionable value to anyone wishing to assess the intellectual and scientific standing of psychology, or its possible utility to them.
Translation: "According to my definition of science, clinical psychology is a science." This is an example of post-modernism, and post-modernism is something you need to guard against, along with all the classical logical errors.
There is a single definition of science, one on which all scientists agree.
You are correct that clinical psychology is not a science in the sense that physics is. As you point out, neither are many medical fields, nor are astronomy and astrophysics, much of earth science, nor any other field that must rely mainly or even partially on observation rather than on controlled experiment.
These statements are false, and your attempt to assign them to me shows that you need to read more carefully. I never took the positions you are trying to attribute to me.
Observation can be a valid form of evidence, unless the things being observed are self-reporting human subjects. For example, George Gamow calculated and predicted a small microwave signature in support of the Big Bang theory. The microwave signature was then observed (and Mr. Gamow's views and biases became irrelevant). There is still no better explanation for this signature than the Big Bang, but if an explanation should be offered that explains and predicts more, the Big Bang will be discarded.
When dealing with human subjects, simply observing without any controls in place (and without any basis for shaping scientific theories) leads to the present state of clinical psychology — a logical free-fire zone, one in which anyone can say anything, and one in which people are regularly jailed on the basis of bogus expert testimony.
People are not thrown in jail on the strength of the opinions of astronomers.
These are interesting issues, and worth discussing, but in your argument they are used to foreclose rather than broaden the consideration of the scientific bases of psychology.
In my argument, the points you have posted are not present, I never made them, and I do not agree with them. They are false.
You are really off to a good start.
And that last is exactly the subject of your final claim — that not only is psychology not a precise science of controlled experiment like physics (granted), it further has no scientific basis whatever and instead has the status of a faith.
The practice of clinical psychology is based on faith, not evidence. Many years ago, homosexuality was added to the DSM [ the "Bible" of clinical psychology ] based on ... evidence? No, based on a popular belief — that's belief — that it is a disease amenable to psychological treatment. There was no evidence whatever to support this belief, but that didn't stop the editors of the DSM.
Later, homosexuality was removed from the DSM, based on ... evidence? No, based on popular sentiment and political pressure that it didn't belong there. There is still no firm scientific evidence one way or the other, but it seems not to be either treatable or a disease — according to popular sentiment, and the failure of treatment methods.
Imagine something like gravity being removed from physics based on political pressure. It could not happen, because physics is a science. It did happen in clinical psychology, because clinical psychology is not a science.
In the meantime, many homosexuals paid the price for the false belief that clinical psychology is a science.
(In passing, I'll observe that mathematics is not a science either, contrary to your claim in one of your replies to replies...)
Mathematics is the queen of all sciences. It is the most rigorous of all sciences, and it is governed by evidence and proof to a greater degree than any of the other sciences. Indeed, it is the foundation on which modern physics, which you acknowledge to be a science, is built.
Physics is a science because mathematics is a science. Were the latter not true, the former would not be true either, and you have just shot yourself in the foot.
Mathematics is a formal logic game, resting on untested (and untestable) principles of representation and meaning (e.g., the notion of symbol), logic and deduction (e.g., syllogism), definition (e.g., set).
Okay, now I have the picture. You very simply do not have any idea what you are talking about.
Current clinical psychology is indeed based in science...
As I expected, you are now waving your hands in the air, and you continue to do so. Have a nice day.
This correspondent proceeded to list examples of psychological experiments, hoping through this list to show that there is science taking place. I was reminded of Richard Feynman's famous "Cargo Cult Science" anecdote, in which people who want the status of science expect to be able to imitate scientific procedures while ignoring the essence of science — that of creating a testable theoretical foundation, objectively comparing the theory to reality, and most importantly, accepting that a failure of this reality test requires the abandonment of the theory, a process that virtually never happens in clinical psychology.
In this writer's effort to dismiss mathematics as an onanistic pursuit, he wildly distorts the meaning of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, assuming he knows the name. I have noticed that writers objecting to my article feel it necessary to demonstrate their knowledge of scientific topics, but in doing so, end up demonstrating the opposite.
On reading my reply, this writer abandoned the topic and tried to paint science as a religion. This brought to mind the old saying "to a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Required Reading I
My name is [ ... ]. I am [ ... ] years of age and finishing my [ ... ] year of the [ ... ] at the University of [ ... ].
I must admit, I am a fan of your "Is Psychology a Science?" article. So much so, that I have relayed it to one of my professors. It will be required reading for this term's Psychology [ ... ] Neuroscience (a senior undergraduate seminar). We will be discussing it in next week's seminar.
I am honored that my article has caught your interest and become part of your curriculum. I hope the exercise and discussion is a productive one, and I am interested to hear any feedback you care to provide.
Although the article is not crystal clear on this point, it examines the relationship between clinical and theoretical psychology, e.g. the fact that the latter seems to have little effect on the former. I say this because, although the topic of the article is apparent to a nonspecialist, it may not seem specific enough to someone in the field.
Required Reading II
Well, my friend, it was quite the experience. Since the course was filled with art students (I put the psychology ones in there as well, though the BSc ones would argue quite to the contrary), I had little time to do any of the usual readings for our seminar, with the exception of yours, since I am in science and had little time throughout the semester. Nevertheless, the professor was so impressed with the debate at the end of the semester with the class, he decided to pass me.
It was academic Thermopylae, only the Greeks actually won this time. The entire class and the professor piled on top of me. Your arguments, combined with my own, were sufficient for the distribution of one plate of ass after the next. Everyone was pleased at the end, so much so, they bought two pitchers. I took it a little further though and argued that the entire field of Psychology was all nonsense. The professor, also a skeptic, was pleased.
This is all very unusual for a place like [ ... ], where the Department of Psychology is a popular destination for youth with no desire whatsoever to attempt any of the actual sciences that require some discipline and real world constraints imposed by the universe. Many of the students were quite angry since they had all spent thousands of dollars in their program thus far and were making final preparations for graduation.
I wish I had been there! I wonder how often such a debate happens in academia, among people freshly trained to think critically, out of sight of those who need psychology to be true.
As a science student you may take this sort of outcome for granted, since the debate necessarily pivoted on evidence rather than passion, but it is only recently that psychology has begun to be examined in this forthright way.
Thank you for keeping me in the loop, and for having an open mind.
Is Psychology Entirely Unscientific?
I am a nursing student (also a quasi-science, quite to my dismay), and I wanted to go into clinical psychology. I, being skeptical, googled "psychology & science" and found your wonderful article.
I have two questions. Please understand I am not attempting to challenge you, I am asking questions from a nieve stance, with the expectiation on being enlightened by your responces. Here are my questions:
1) Is "all" of psychology non-scientific? I find this hard to believe, as some branches use controlled experiments in every test, which are "repeatable" ...
First, repeatability is not enough to assure that a field is scientific. Astrologers always get the same result when they cast a chart for a given birthdate, but that doesn't make the chart scientific.
Second, it is important to understand that if an experiment meant to test a scientific theory is conducted and it fails, it must invalidate the theory that led to the test. If this falsifiability criterion is not met, the theory is not scientific.
Sometimes experiments are conducted in psychology, but they generally do not stand as tests of theory, and when they fail, they generally do not invalidate any theory. In a truly scientific field, it is not a matter of sometimes, but always — all theories are testable, and all experimental failures invalidate the theory that led to the test. Scientists don't get to pick and choose which experiments they consider important.
So, even though there are experiments in psychology, they don't have the effect of invalidating some practitioner's pet theory about the human mind in any consistent way. Consequently, psychology's clients are utterly subject to the whim of clinical psychologists, who don't really care whether what they are doing has been tested scientifically.
That is the answer to your question. If psychology ever becomes scientific, there will be a clear connection between theory, feasible experiments that must not fail, and clinical practice. This is simply not how modern psychology works.
which brings me to question 2)
2) If there are studies from psychology which refute the "theories"
of psychology, isn't this, then, science?
No, for the simple reason that the refutations don't stop the practice. There are any number of cases where a psychological theory has been refuted, but this has no effect whatsoever on clinical practice, which just goes on as though nothing happened.
Examples. There are clinicians still practicing "recovered memory therapy" and "facilitated communication therapy", after both fields have been thoroughly discredited in what pass for "experiments" in the field of psychology. But because people want to believe in them, they are still practiced, contrary to evidence that has discredited both practices.
Science is about finding out what "reality is not", correct?
No, that is not correct. The reason you do not know what distinguishes a scientific theory from an ordinary belief is because you are in a course of training for a field that is not scientific, a field where people feel free to say absolutely anything.
I have heard several psychologists talk about studies that shred the credibility (and reliability) of the DSM-4 also ... but this is what makes science, "science", right?
No, it is not. In order for the DSM to have scientific standing, it would have to spring from an internally consistent theory that proposes feasible tests, and if the tests failed, the DSM would be thrown out. Having professors tear the DSM apart, with no effect on clinical practice and without reference to a core theory, only shows that psychology is not a scientific undertaking.
In scientific fields, there is a core of theory to which everything else refers. If experiments disprove the theory, the entire field must necessarily fall apart. When experiments disproved the ether theory of the late 19th century, physics was in limbo (without a valid theoretical core) until Einstein produced a new, testable theory that explained the earlier experimental failure and proposed new tests that, if they had failed, would have invalidated his theory as well.
No one took Einstein seriously until his proposed experiments (starting in 1919 and extending through the 1960s) confirmed his predictions. Until then, Einstein's "theory" was a mere "hypothesis".
That is how science works. In psychology, by contrast, clinicians start a new fad, and unless and until they are sued, they continue to practice it (as in the fad that killed Candace Newmaker). There is no core theory, and there are no proposed experiments that, if they fail, invalidate the nonexistent theory.
Look at each major change in psychological practice starting with Freud, moving through Bruno Bettelheim falsely blaming mothers for their children's autism, to the present, and you will see a history of whimsy followed by cocktail chatter, instead of theory followed by experiment.
An additional question for you: How else, in your opinion, can we find out about abnormal human conditions and their treatments?
There is no ethical way to study human behavior with the kinds of controls that would be required to produce meaningful results. And sweeping that restriction aside would be a necessary but not sufficient precondition for meaningful study. Many more systematic difficulties remain — most are listed in my paper.
The main reasons psychology is not a scientific field are that (1) it is not ethical to carry out the kinds of experiments that would be required to produce decent science, and (2) if this were not true, if somehow this restriction were to be lifted, most of the people presently in the field would turn out to be unqualified to do science.
It is not an accident that a psychology degree is almost entirely worthless in the real world. It is one of the easiest degrees to acquire, but then it is nearly impossible to turn the degree into meaningful employment.
A psychology degree ranks slightly higher than a philosophy degree (the latter a certain guarantee of unemployment), but it ranks below nearly any other degree available from an institution of higher learning. And only the most candid of counselors are willing to tell you this.
A Student Wants to Know
I'm a psychology student, very humble and junior in my approach and certainly won't question your views strongly.
I'm due to write a paper on the debate of psychology and science and have got a great deal out of your arguments, which give me the ability to look at psychology from another angle.
Can I ask you however, what your thoughts are on behavioural psychology such as that developed by Watson, Skinner and the likes and the methods of approach used in this case. Due to it being something that can be seen/observed and henced reasonably predictable, would you see this as scientific?
Not remotely.
If not, please tell me why.
1. A scientific study that involves human subjects must distinguish between what a person reports and that person's actual subjective state. This is called the "self-reporting" problem.
2. The self-reporting problem might be solved by creating a control group, but this is almost never done for some practical and basic ethical reasons. Without a control group, psychological studies cannot be taken seriously as evidence of anything more than a person applying his opinions to a set of subjects. This, by the way, explains why any number of professional advocates for different outlooks can find "support" for their views independent of each other, and of reality.
Example. Let's say a psychologist wants to prove that his method is efficacious in preventing teenage suicide. In order to rise to the level of science, there would have to be a control group who received a plausible placebo talk therapy, alongside the group receiving the real thing.
Let's say the control group has twice as many teenage suicides as the experimental group. Do you see what this would mean? Apart from the extreme unlikelihood that the experimenter and subjects in the control group would not realize they were the control group (which would ruin the science), there are very serious ethical issues here in withholding treatment from the control group, as well as deceiving the control subjects about what was taking place, e.g. research instead of therapy.
For these and other reasons and to be perfectly blunt, one cannot do science in human clinical psychology. One can do pseudo-science, but one cannot do science. Ethics and problems of meaningful experimental design prevent it.
If you study pigeons or rats, then yes, you can do research and try to extrapolate the result to humans, because pigeons have no rights. But as to direct human study, no, one simply cannot do it. This is why clinical psychology has evolved into a loose collection of fads whose popularity varies with public taste rather than scientific evidence. And these fads are not harmless — patients die. Google for "Candace Newmaker" for an example of a child killed by a fad therapy. There are many similar cases, this one is particularly dramatic.
In a more recent story involving the death of a child, authorities are charging the parents of a young girl with deliberately poisoning her with drugs that were diagnosed by a psychiatrist. More here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/us/15bipolar.html
This story shows how aggressive marketing of drugs by big pharmaceutical companies can lead to tragedy, as well as showing the very poor connection between clinical psychology and scientific evidence.
Very frankly, it is nearly impossible to read current literature in clinical psychology and not see it as a system that is completely out of control, unregulated by science or common sense.
Eminence versus Evidence I
This is part of an exchange on a different topic.
A note about the note on credentials: In science anything which is said must have a basis (but as you say, not in the paper credential of the one who says it). If I write a paper on fruitfly sex, I must first establish from prior knowledge/research a basis for writing.
No, this is wrong. What you must do is have the evidence. If you have the evidence, and if it is repeatable by others, your credentials don't matter. If you don't have the evidence, your credentials don't matter again. Or, to say it simply, the greatest amount of scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific evidence.
I don't argue the "trump" issue at all, but my point here is that you also have to have a basis.
No, evidence is all there is. A total greenhorn might hit upon a breakthrough, and that breakthrough must be tested on the evidence, not on the reputation of the originator or a thorough reading of prior work. Example, Einstein and relativity. Who would want to listen to a Swiss patent clerk? Answer: a scientist.
However, that basis is prior research/knowledge, not your "credentials" as you're using the term.
All such issues turn on the theory and its evidence, not at all in a track record. Example Wegener, a meteorologist, who proposed that the continents were drifting around, several decades before that could be shown by observational evidence. The fact that he was a meteorologist (not a geologist) hurt his acceptance among all but scientists, who waited for evidence (and eventually got it).
I don't disagree at all that the trump is still the evidence for your contention, but the background support, the basis, the prior research, is part of that evidence.
This is a first-class logical error named "argumentum ad verecundiam" (argument from authority). It is warned against in the first year of a scientist's training. It is always an error to examine anything but the present evidence for a proposition.
Your experience in the field, for instance, gives you the knowledge base from which to make the statements you're making.
No, it doesn't. I am a seventh-grade dropout. If science were not arranged as it is, I would be totally unqualified to make the statements I am making. In point of fact, when the Oregon Academy of Science named me "Scientist of the Year" in 1986, they did it based solely on my work, not on what credentials I had. That is because the Academy is composed of scientists, people who know which side of the bread the butter is on.
I guess the teacher's point (as I read it) and mine is that it's not always easy to judge the content without the background (knowledge of the speaker or of the hearer).
Again, this emphasis on background is always an error, a first-class mistake that all scientists are warned against early in their training.
Again, in a research paper, one starts with a review of what others have found.
This is optional and it doesn't have the meaning you're attaching to it. References to the work of others may or may not be present, but if they are present, they exist solely to add to the corpus of evidence, not to lean on the reputation of the researchers who created it, or on the sheer weight of work supporting a particular viewpoint. And the paper might then go on to completely contradict the prior evidence citations — that is common.
This was drilled into me in my research methodology class, where the instructor basically said that a researcher is not allowed to say anything original —
My God. The majority of scientific breakthroughs throughout history arose from someone totally "unqualified", speaking out of class, saying something entirely original and with no basis in prior work. Galileo. Newton. Darwin. Einstein. Wegener. Each of these examples is of someone who did not have a conventional basis for speaking up at all, and who contradicted the prevailing wisdom, and who was eventually shown to have a valid basis for speaking.
What she actually said is that you can't state a hypothesis (you can't HAVE a hypothesis) without deriving it from prior findings,
This is totally, completely, false. You have been misled by a miseducated teacher. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. It is quite false. Einstein's view of the universe utterly contradicted all prior work and common sense, as did the later quantum theory. Both these theories won acceptance on the basis of evidence, not agreement with precedent.
You may be confusing science with law, where precedent is central, as is authority. There is no authority in science, only evidence.
So in other words, one cannot start a research project without a thorough review of prior work.
That is a different point. To read prior work is not to require it for your own — you may well intend to contradict it.
And that prior work is the support for the hypothesis and part of the support for the new findings/arguments.
That is entirely false. Relativity contradicted the prevailing ether theory, which had stood since Newton's time as an explanation for various phenomena, and that lay at the heart of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. But this didn't stop Einstein, the patent clerk, and in due time (based on observational evidence) his entirely original scientific theory overthrew all of physics. This is just one example among many.
So, the teacher asked (I assume), "What is this guy's 'prior knowledge' by which he supports his contentions?
And by so doing, the teacher reveals her lack of understanding of how ideas and theories are shaped in the realm of science.
[ in a section about Linus Pauling's contention that Vitamin C could treat the common cold ]
2 problems with Dr. Pauling's Vitamin C arguments: 1. (As you said) evidence isn't there. 2. His expertise was not in that area,
On the contrary, he was a world-renowned, Nobel Prizewinning microbiologist. He was in principle in a perfect position to make the claim. He just couldn't come up with any evidence.
And your challenge here tends, I think, to support what I've said.
Not at all. Scientists reacted to Pauling's theory by asking "Where's the evidence?" There was none, and the idea died. The fact that the idea originated with a world-renowned, Nobel-Prizewinning scientist made no difference at all.
I know Pauling was a Nobel winner, but I know nothing about his field. Even so, I concluded it had nothing to do with Vitamin C, and said so; you've called me on my "lack of credentials".
No, I used this as an example where the lack of evidence ruled the issue. Credentials mean nothing.
I am not a scientist, unless you accept that psychology is a science — which is where I learned scientific methodology;
But psychology isn't a science. It pretends to be a science, and I now understand how it was that your "science" instructor was so misguided. I have been having a running debate with psychologists for several years now on this topic (not that this is an open question among scientists, only among psychologists). There are still some psychologists who think psychology is a science, against all evidence to the contrary.
Many skilled, experienced psychologists come to recognize that psychology is not a science, but just as many newly minted graduates, especially from the less disciplined schools, need to learn this the hard way, hopefully without being sued or jailed:
"Psychiatrist Won't Practice Medicine After Girl's Death", an account of the death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley while under a psychiatrist's care.
"Victim of Attachment Therapy", an account of the death of 10-year-old Candace Newmaker while undergoing "rebirthing" therapy.
Many psychologists respond to my paper by asking, "Are you a psychologist? You can't debate the status of psychology unless you are", people who, by falling into this logical error, ironically support the position that psychology is not a science.
I don't know a lot about the "hard sciences", and specifically don't know how microbiology relates to Vitamin C.
Easy answer: without evidence, it doesn't.
Eminence versus Evidence II
I am getting a lot of this kind of self-referential inquiry lately — in essence, "What authority do you have to criticize psychology?"
Mr.? Dr.? Lutus,
Since you think titles matter, I can anticipate what kind of post this will be.
I think it would be helpful if somewhere on your site you included a link to some biographical information about yourself. I'm doing a research paper arguing that psychology is not a science and was looking to find you're occupation and degree to judge reliability.
Really? Do you think the reliability of evidence depends on its source? If you are being taught this, you need to change professors or schools, because you are being tricked into a well-established logical error named "argumentum ad verecundiam."
Scientific evidence must stand on its own. It cannot be judged based on its source. If this were not true, Albert Einstein would have died a lowly patent clerk, rather than as someone who overthrew much of what we thought we knew about physics. He did this using evidence, not authority.
And this principle cuts both ways. When Nobel Prizewinner Linus Pauling claimed that vitamin C might cure the common cold, scientists asked to see the evidence. His standing in the world of science mattered not at all. If he had been a graduate student, the evidence would have been the only factor in judging his ideas. And as a Nobel Prizewinner, evidence was still the only factor.
Another example. Late in his life, Nobel Prizewinner William Shockley traveled about lecturing on the supposed intellectual inferiority of African-Americans. If the assumptions behind your inquiry were valid, his status would have lent weight to his racist ideas. But intelligent, educated people judged that issue based on evidence alone. You should do the same.
In science, evidence means everything, reputation means nothing. The greatest amount of scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific evidence.
If you've already included that information, please point me in the right direction.
I think I have done just that. If you think otherwise, you need to ask yourself whether you are being educated in the principles of science, or being told what to think by people who believe authority trumps evidence.
Cargo Cult Science
As a psychologist (PhD) I have to agree with much of your assessment of the lack of science in the practices and theories of clinical psychologists. But I do take exception with one part...if I have understood it correctly.
You seem to indicate that psychology...because it studies humans...can not be a science because you can not do certain things to humans that you can do to animals (though animal rights people make sure that they are protected).
That's true, and it represents an ethical limitation that cannot be circumvented, no matter the potential reward.
A scientific field is one which uses scientific methods.
No, that is false. A scientific field must do much more than simply use scientific methods. It must create falsifiable theories, and it must be willing to abandon falsified theories.
Anyone can use scientific methods, but without necessarily taking some additional steps required to create true science. Astrologers use scientific methods, but because some essential pieces are missing, astrology isn't a science.
Advocates of "Intelligent Design" use scientific methods, but because they begin research with a preconceived idea of what is to be "discovered," and because they won't allow the evidence to lead them to any other conclusion, the process is not a scientific one.
In the middle of the last century...Richard Feynman...the Nobel laureate physicist...spoke of psychology as a science.
This is simply untrue. In a now-famous article titled "Cargo Cult Science," Feynman explains that some "sciences" go through the motions without honoring the substance, and he was thinking of psychology among other fields. In fact, his position corresponded to what I have just said about form versus substance.
There are a handful of requirements for true science, and falsifiability tops the list. Unless a field creates falsifiable theories, unless the theories lead to practical experiments, unless the experiments are able to potentially falsify the theory, unless the field's practitioners accept the outcome of experiments, the field is not scientific.
Psychology was founded as a science...
Yes, as I point out in my article, but that was a goal, an unrealized intention.
... its first general instrument was the IQ test and even clinical psychology students had to demonstrate a high level capability of scientific experimental ability before they could get a PhD.
Those two points are in direct contradiction. I.Q. testing has never been remotely scientific. Psychologist R. M. Yerkes infamously abused I.Q. testing to accomplish personal racist goals, with far-reaching consequences for Jews and other groups. In "The Mismeasure of Man," Steven Jay Gould adroitly exposes the many abuses of I.Q. testing, up to the present day. Did you really mean to join those two points in that way?
Not so any more. You can now get a PsyD. if you are science allergic.
I seem to hear from a lot of these recent graduates. Many of them think the field is scientific, based on outward appearances.
What you describe...fairly accurately...is what clinical psychology has become. That is different than saying it never was...and never could be...scientific in its approach.
It never was scientific. An intention is not a reality. The aspirations of its founders collided with the reality that human ethics prevents the sort of clinical evaluations that would be required to produce useful scientific evidence. And I am not complaining, let me make clear. The kinds of studies that would be required are rightly forbidden.
The current Code of Ethics for Psychologists says at Standard 2.04; Psychologists work is based upon established scientific knowledge of the discipline.
And psychologists don't violate this standard, for the reason that there is no "established scientific knowledge" in the field. If there was, recovered memory therapy would never have gotten off the ground. Freudian analysis would have been stillborn. Facilitated communication would have been recognized for what it was — a sham meant to appeal to unsophisticated, desperate parents.
Each of these practices would have been tested scientifically before getting to the clinical level, and each of them would have been cast out, instead of having to be abandoned only after much legal wrangling.
Plain and simple. (That immediately rules out DSM and all of its progeny).
And if psychology were truly scientific, the DSM would be cast out on a number of grounds.
But clinical psychology allied itself with the wholly imaginary...unscientific in the extreme...DSM and its various editions. That is...they have abdicated from science. This is not just an academic point.
By doing so they have created an ethical issue that the public could use legally. Anyone jailed...or incarcerated...or who could not get a job because of a DSM diagnosis of disorder can cite the text of the Code of Ethics...and the statement by the American Psychiatric Association at www.dsm5.org/planning.cfm that the scientific basis of the disorders may never be uncovered.
(What could the scientific basis of sibling rivalry be anyway?
Actually, I would have wondered what a clinical psychologist would expect to be able to do about it, or whether it presents something abnormal or treatable.
The DSM-IV is at times a pretty funny book...except the world takes it as truth).
Including a lot of very serious clinicians.
Also...in the DSM-III the psychiatrists...who have never claimed to be scientists...
Actually, Freud originally intended to build psychiatry as a science of mind. So much for good intentions.
...did an interrater reliability study which showed that there was little agreement between clinicians independently diagnosing from the same set of facts.
And the head of research for DSM-IV points out that clinicians tend to create diagnoses for the conditions they want to treat regardless of the facts, which makes the same point (no diagnostic consistency).
That is...the disorder categories have neither validity nor reliability...necessary prerequisites for a scientific psychological procedure or test.
So my disagreement with you is that psychology is a scientific endeavor but clinical psychologists...notoriously research aversive...have abdicated to join psychiatry.
You are missing a crucial point. If psychology were scientific, the theoretical side of the field would invalidate the clinical practice, using firm principles. But there are no firm principles, no clear theoretical laws.
If an engineer builds a bridge and the bridge collapses, an investigation will reveal the violation of a well-established law that is part of physics, and the error will not be repeated.
If a clinical psychologist induces a bogus recovered memory of sexual abuse and someone goes to jail, which psychological law exists to correct the injustice and prevent a recurrence?
You need to recognize that psychology is all of a piece, and the theoretical side cannot govern the clinical side for lack of coherent, unifying theoretical principles.
Otherwise...I wish there were more articles like yours...especially from psychologists.
If a psychologist had the training required to detect the absence of hard science, he wouldn't enter the field. Psychologists are largely self-selected to ignore the condition of the field.
Thanks for writing.
New Age Religion
I agree with your comments that psychology is the new age religion. However, it is a bold statement to make the claim the psychology is for people that are too smart for religion, implying that people of faith are stupid.
But that is an established fact. Religious people are not as intelligent or accomplished as those who see through religion. This is a scientific finding, and the evidence is presented in my article On Believing.
The proof is overwhelming and ubiquitous. For example:
Creation itself proves that a creator is necessary, just as a painting demands that there was someone to paint it.
Nonsense. To make the argument that a creator is necessary for everything requires us to follow the logic to its inescapable conclusion and ask who created God, and who created that creator, ad infinitum. But religious people are too ignorant or cowardly to apply logic to their own belief system. Religious people are typically self-selected airheads who couldn't reason their way out of a wet paper bag.
And claiming that God doesn't need a creator changes only the form of the argument, not the result — if God doesn't require a designer, then we don't either.
It's possible to generate extremely complex systems by simply providing the raw materials, some energy, and an environment with limitations to filter out failed designs. This is a standard laboratory exercise in computer science and biology, and nature has her own demonstrations ... like us.
It is easy to fall into the delusion that we create the world that is around us ...
This is called a "false choice," and the concept of the false choice is presented in an educated person's freshman year. It is not a choice between God and man as creators of the universe. It is a choice between our knowing, and not knowing, how the universe came into being. We don't know. Religious con men try to claim they know God personally and will happily tell you what He told them — for a small fee, of course.
... and, if we are truthful, the core of that delusion is pride and extreme self love.
Accepting the fact that we don't know how the universe came into being is certainly not a reason to be smug. The false choice between humans and God as creators of the universe only shows the shallowness of religious thinking.
Rational, educated people, when confronted by something we don't know, are able to say "We don't know." Narcissists and religious believers go looking for an unimpeachable external authority to give them the level of certainty required to, say, fly an airliner into a building full of infidels.
Consistencies in human behavior as shown by our conscious show that there is a basic right and wrong,
There is no "basic right and wrong." That is a myth. We choose the rules by which be live, and morals are based on human choices, not divine law. Once it was moral to own slaves, now that is immoral. It was once moral to treat women as second-class citizens, now that is immoral. Sometimes it is moral to kill, for example unbelievers, sometimes not. Religious leaders decreed it immoral to read Galileo's books or look through telescopes, but eventually people realized he was right, so it's OK now. We choose our morals, then some con artists try to claim divine inspiration for them, a scam that only works on the weak-minded.
The most dangerous organism on Planet Earth is a religious believer who cannot think for himself, cannot make rational choices based on evidence. The attack on the World Trade Center proved that, as though any further proof was needed.
it is the signature of God that stands and testifies against us.
Imagine being in a world where you have to make your own choices and accept personal responsibility for the consequences. Guess what? This is that world.
We have all violated what our conscious (or the law of our heart) has pointed to as being right, we have all fallen short of what our Creator has intended us to be.
So God talks to you? After you take your medication, does He continue to tell you what to do, or does He fall silent?
This is a statement of fact and begs that we are in need of redemption from this corrupted state.
The "corrupted state" is called ignorance. Education is the cure, rather than following the advice of some failed used car salesman.
Though psychology has a branch that is dedicated to diagnosing abnormalities it also does its fair share of justifying a person's reactions to their environments.
Yes, and that is why clinical psychology has become another religion. Clinical psychology has a model for mental health — for "normal behavior" — hidden within it, but there is no single model for "normal" in an ever-changing world. In today's world, avoiding rigid religious beliefs has critical survival value.
It is our way of justifying what we do as correct in the face of our own heart testifying against us.
I am sure the 9/11 terrorists were each sincerely following their hearts.
Once you fall short of 100% you can never attain that state again, and when one holds us accountable for our own thoughts we are all guilty.
It appears you're a Catholic. It's sometimes possible to identify which set of moronic ideas a religious person is held hostage by, and correlate that with a particular sect.
But in a more fundamental way all religions are the same, and they require an astonishing level of stupidity to prevail against everyday reality.
This necessitates something else that is higher than us to redeem us, and it cannot be done through ourselves. This is why God (Jesus) died for our sins,
Honest to God (no pun intended). In the midst of your intellectual bankruptcy, you don't even know your theology. God and Jesus aren't the same thing.
This is astonishing. You don't even know the specifics of the myth by which you are held hostage.
to address the issue of our failure and to restore us. Psychology attempts to draw a maze of thought around the our problems, never relating to the central issue.
The central issue is human stupidity.
Pearls are considered to have value, produced from the continual wrapping of the oyster shell. Clinical psychology produces similar results, yet we forget that at the center of all those layers there was an irritation that has not been removed.
I agree, and education is the cure — for those willing to recognize its value.
Some Reasonable Questions
Hi, This morning I stumbled on to your website, and read a few of your articles on psychology. I've taken several low level courses in it (and plan to take more), but really, I can't say that I completely disagree with you completely. In fact, it is making me question the future of my education.
I think your timing is good, better than most. Many people don't consider the course of their education until the last moment they could change direction has passed.
I noticed a few of the problems you have outlined. I've always dismissed them however, as being the result of (to be frank) a lot of incompetents damaging an otherwise promising field.
There's some truth in that, but I ask that you think more deeply about this. Why doesn't the presence of incompetents injure physics or mathematics in the same way? The answer is that physics and mathematics are sciences, where claims must be accompanied by evidence.
There are incompetents in every field — in fact, science was invented to weed out incompetents through a strict process for evaluating facts and theories. Remember that science is not facts and theories, it is a way to evaluate facts and theories. In science, evidence is all there is — nothing else matters.
On the other hand you appear to think the entire field is completely beyond redemption, something that needs to just be chucked into the woodpile.
I wouldn't say that. In fact, I didn't say that. If I said that about psychology, I would have to say it about astrology, too. But there are a lot of weak-minded people out there who think astrology is real. Do I have the right to deprive people of their sad attachment to astrology, just because it is nonsense? That would be like laughing at a handicapped person in the street — it would be uncivilized and unkind.
Out of pity and compassion, I prefer not to do that to astrology or its followers, in particular because no one with an ounce of sense takes astrology seriously. The same cannot be said about psychology, and that is where the danger lies — psychologists make claims about the scientific standing of psychology that are simply false.
Scientists who read the psychology literature, who notice the weak to nonexistent experimental standards, the indifference to new evidence or a lack of evidence, are prone to dismiss psychology in its present form. But scientists who work in large academic institutions are pressured (and I know about this from firsthand experience) not to criticize psychology too harshly because it is a way for the university to make a huge amount of money from undisciplined students with little future potential, who want to take the easiest possible courses.
There are a few poorly kept secrets in academia. One is that college athletics makes so much money that universities tolerate the presence of "students" who are nothing of the kind. Another is that psychology, sociology and a handful of other disciplines are tolerated because they greatly increase the size of the student body, beyond the core student population who are actually seeking an education and who will become tomorrow's leaders.
In the old days, attending college was a privilege extended only to the most qualified students (and wrongly denied to fully qualified women and people of color). But since then, particularly in Western democracies, we've adopted the twisted idea that everyone can and should go to college. In order to make that happen, colleges have lowered their standards to an absurd degree, such that (oversimplifying a bit here) graduates with advanced degrees still don't know anything and still can't find meaningful employment.
So, my questions are:
a) Do you have any suggestions, any at all, on what should replace it?
Psychology — I mean human psychology here, not rat and pigeon psychology — can't be placed on a firmer evidentiary footing without violating the rights of experimental subjects. This is a fact that cannot be circumvented. And without high-quality evidence, you cannot falsify claims anyone cares to make. Without the possibility of falsification, there is no science. So it's not obvious how to proceed, but asserting that human psychology is a science is not an acceptable substitute.
If your reply is "Nothing" then I must ask, what would happen to those so ill they're incapable of taking care of themselves?
We're now moving into basic moral and ethical questions. Do we have the right to claim that meaningful treatments exist, when they don't? Do we have the right to identify people as mentally ill who are not (and vice versa)? These common practices distort the entire field, and they rely on the popular view that human psychology is a science.
There are a handful of treatments that actually work, but they are not psychological treatments (as psychology is formally defined). For example, lithium is very effective in treating what is now called "bipolar disorder." But the administration of lithium is not psychology, it is pharmacology.
And what should we(society as a whole) tell people genuinely in need of SOME kind of treatment?
The implication of your question is that there must be something we can do, and if there isn't, we should keep that a secret. Well, no, and no.
"We don't know how to help you, we've given up trying to figure it out, so just go talk to a bartender" hardly seems like responsible advise.
It's responsible advice if the bartender can do a better job than a therapist. I won't make the claim, since I have no evidence, but psychologists regularly make the claim that professional counseling is more effective than talking to a bartender, even though there is no supporting evidence, and some contradicting evidence.
One might argue that the bartender uses a dangerous drug as part of his treatment, but the same can — and has been — said about the modern practice of psychology, in which drugs of questionable effectiveness and unknown side effects are enthusiastically prescribed (and clients sometimes die as a result).
b) It seems that one of your biggest problems with clinical psychology is the tendency of practitioners to ignore experiments, rather than allow theories to become discredited.
I take that position primarily because ignoring evidence identifies clinical psychology as unscientific, but also because it leads to unbelievable abuses of unearned authority.
Certainly this is a bad thing, but isn't it more a problem with (again) highly respected incompetent people rather than the field as a whole?
No, and here is why: if an incompetent can make baseless claims without anyone asking for supporting evidence, then the entire field is built on shifting sand, and the person making the claim is a mere symptom of an underlying malady.
In science, real incompetents appear from time to time, but they are quickly called to account. Last week, Nobel Prizewinner James D. Watson, world-famous co-discoverer of DNA, made some unscientific (and outrageous) claims about the intelligence of black people. As a result, within days he was fired from his prestigious post as Chancellor of the Cold Spring Laboratory. His world fame and eminence as a Nobel Prizewinner made no difference at all — his statements were unscientific and indefensible.
By contrast, when psychologist Bruno Bettelheim made the claim that autism resulted from incompetent mothering by emotionally frigid women, it was accepted without question — after all, Bettelheim was an eminent psychologist. This "refrigerator-mom" idea lasted for decades, based solely on the eminence of the originator, and many innocent, caring mothers were unfairly held responsible for something that was not their fault.
I hope I have made this point: in science, evidence stands above eminence. In human psychology, it's the other way around.
From what I have seen (and I freely admit my knowledge here is quite limited), a lot of fields have similar problems to a much smaller extent.
Yes, they do. All of them. The difference lies in how those problems are handled. In scientific fields, people can say anything, but they must eventually back up their claims or abandon them. By contrast, in counseling sessions all over the country, therapists still raptly listen to bogus "recovered memories," even though people outside the field see no evidence for the reality of these memories, and courts of law have decided to no longer hear cases in which "recovered memories" are the primary evidence.
What about "physicists" who claim to be close to discovering cold fusion,
This example supports the position that science works. When Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made their original claim, scientists all over the world tried to duplicate their results, but failed. Lots of excitement at first, but no laboratory confirmation. End of story. That's how science deals with nonsense.
On the one hand, in the interest of open dialogue we want people to feel free to make any claim they care to. On the other hand, all scientific claims must eventually be supported by evidence. Until they are, the claims are hypotheses, not theories. If the claims are eventually supported by evidence, they achieve the status of scientific theories — but they never become facts. Fact is not science's domain.
or "biologists" supporting ID over evolution?
That's not science. Your example is of someone relying on his status as a "biologist" to make a claim, as though a title can stand in for evidence. Science doesn't work that way. When Einstein the patent clerk published what came to be known as Special Relativity, he hadn't gotten his degree yet, but that didn't matter — only his ideas mattered. But until evidence began to support his ideas, they didn't matter very much. Later on, when Einstein the world-famous scientist disputed quantum theory, other scientists waited for evidence supporting his position, which never arrived. It's all about evidence — not standing, not shouting.
It's not a perfect comparison by any means as most real physicists laugh at cold fusion
Not at all! Physicists aren't laughing, they're either doing the necessary laboratory work or waiting to see how the work comes out. Science is more about patient work than slapping one's knee. And in science the door is not closed on cold fusion, because in science, doors are rarely closed, and no one is laughing.
and most biologists laugh at ID,
That's a little different. ID isn't even remotely plausible as it has been presented, and the arguments in favor of it tend to exhibit an embarrassing level of ignorance. One can always argue that God is pulling invisible puppet strings in a way that cannot be detected. That's an interesting philosophical position, but it cannot be tested or falsified, and therefore, true or false, it is not scientific.
But religious believers are not satisfied with the idea that God exists in the abstract. They want Him to take a break from making stars and galaxies, and smite their neighbor with the barking dog. Nothing else will do but that the ruler of the universe should come down and smite the owner of a barking dog.
but isn't it the same fundamental problem of a (badly) educated person making outrageous claims before the public? If these people were to gain popular(lay) public acceptance and funding, would it somehow invalidate real physics and biology?
No, because shouting cannot stand in for evidence, and all scientific positions must eventually be supported by evidence.
What if this popular acceptance lead to universities churning out huge numbers of cold fusion&ID "specialists," and pushed real scientists back into a minority?
That's possible, for example the Bush administration is doing all it can to thwart any scientific statements and publications that contradict Administration positions — but this again touches on the reason science exists. Science exists because of a natural human tendency to replace reason with emotion, and if humans were really rational, there would be no science — it would have no purpose. Remember, again, science is not the results, science is the practice, the discipline.
Would that make all their work worthless?
To answer, I must say that science is not the applications of science. Science isn't refuted or validated by application, except insofar as applications produce more evidence for or against a proposition. For example, the GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites are producing some interesting confirmations of both Special and General Relativity. That isn't the purpose of the GPS system, it's an interesting side effect.
But science is not a corporation with a quarterly earnings report, and science doesn't have to sell itself. To those who want results, science (and scientists) can be incredibly frustrating. To those who understand science, it is immensely valuable, nothing else can produce its results, and a price tag cannot be hung on it.
I suspect that this is a different situation somehow, but I honestly don't see how.
What I wrote sounds vaguely to me like a fallacy of some sort, so please understand I'm not trying to attack you, just asking for clarification. There probably is a difference, I just do not see it.
I think at this point you will see that, all outward appearances to the contrary, the difference between scientific and unscientific endeavors lies in the managing of evidence, the weight given to evidence, and the ascendancy of evidence over eminence.
Finally, something bothered me while reading your articles. In my psychology classes we were told, over and over, that abnormal behavior is simply normal behavior "carried to an unhealthy extent" with unhealthy being defined as something like "meaningfully damaging to someone or those around them."
Yes, and that is an important point about human psychology. In order to offer treatments, psychologists have to identify particular behaviors as "abnormal," e.g. unacceptable, and this is where psychology leaves the realm of science and enters the realm of religion.
Science observes reality with perfect dispassion, observing everything, judging nothing. Religion proactively divides behaviors into those deemed acceptable and unacceptable. Psychology can't offer treatments without first judging what is good and bad, a practice formerly reserved to religion. If all human behavior is organisms creatively dealing with ever-changing nature in a morally neutral universe, where is the role for corrective mental surgery?
To put this in its simplest form, when a psychologist utters the word "abnormal" about a mental state whose normalcy is proven by its existence, he has severed any connection with science and entered the domain of religion.
Is a platypus normal?
I haven't read the DSM, but I assume it follows this.
It does, but with many qualifying phrases and caveats that are largely ignored by psychologists.
So perhaps that is why the number of disorders balloons up so much; bad spelling isn't a disorder, but being completely unable to learn how to write does at least require some kind of special attention.
Yes — but is that a mental illness, and can the practice of clinical psychology do anything about it? Or would a normal, non-judgmental teacher be a better, and less expensive, choice?
The truth behind spelling as a mental illness (and many similar examples) is that psychologists have discovered they can't treat real mental illnesses (most of which are turning out to be organic in nature, treatable by chemicals, or untreatable) so they are trying to branch out into domains formerly held by bartenders, astrologers, teachers and aging aunts on porches.
Then again, maybe the authors of the DSM just need to read more introductory textbooks...
This may surprise you, but some of the creators of the DSM have ended up its harshest critics.
Help me Magically Squeeze Emotions out of Dreams
An inquiry from a psychology postgraduate at an institution of higher learning, starting an ambitious, albeit pseudoscientific, research project. And no, I didn't make this up — who could make up such a thing?
I'm doing a project to extract emotions from dreams.
There is no chance for this fantasy to bear useful scientific data, so no matter which mathematical method you choose, the result will be the same: faux science, which happens to be psychology's strong suit.
We need to fit the emotion points (data sets) into a function.
No, what you need to do is craft a scientific, testable theory in which emotions can be extracted from the brainwaves that accompany dreams. In science, skipping over essential preliminary steps is not permitted.
If you forge ahead without bothering to create a testable theory, your work will be (1) a waste of time and grant money, and (2) another example of psychological "science."
Can we use your program, please?
Certainly, although this will not magically turn your work into science.
Would you please provide c code or java code?
Why not open a standard textbook on the subject of mathematical data reduction methods — you know, those parts of science you skipped in school while pursuing your psychology degree? Or would you prefer to use a perfect stranger's computer program without understanding how it works?
What I am saying is, this is a typical example of psychological "science" — all psychology, no science.
One more thing. You haven't bothered to say which of my hundreds of programs you are inquiring about, but as it turns out, the most useful method for reducing brainwave data would be the Fourier Transform method, for which I already provide source code here:
http://www.arachnoid.com/FFTExplorer/index.html
It's scientific! It is, it is!
I read your essay with interest, as it is the same title that I am tackling for my Philosophy module of the final year of my Psychology degree. I must say that I disagree with you (!)
Of course you do. You have just spent your entire educational career moving toward an advanced psychology degree. How could you possibly agree that psychology is not based in science?
but your points did make me think, and I may cite you in my essay.
I hope you do.
Having read your feedback page I cannot resist contributing some of my own opinions.
Your views are welcome.
Firstly, you seem to lump together therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists, when, certainly in the UK, they are all distinct professions, with different training and have different levels of trust and respect from the public.
They are distinct professions, but all of them depend on the scientific standing of human psychology. And, for the reasons set out in my article, psychology has a very poor scientific standing.
As to public trust, this has no bearing on the scientific standing of the field. Astrologers have a lot of public trust, but they don't have any science.
The example of the girl who was killed by her therapists has nothing to do with Psychology.
False. The fully qualified, professional psychologists who carried out the procedure were licensed to practice clinical psychology, and the procedure was widely practiced by clinical psychologists at the time of the procedure.
The responsible therapists were stripped of their licenses and jailed, not because they were discovered to be unqualified to practice clinical psychology, but because their client died. It's very convenient to say "they weren't the real thing" after the fact, but as a matter of public record, they were the real thing.
These therapists were practising rebirthing, which to my knowledge is not endorsed by psychologists
You need to learn how to do research. The practice was widespread and completely accepted at the time of the death. So was "recovered memory therapy", which is still practiced, even though courts of law have decided to reject any further cases in which recovered memories are the primary evidence. There have been too many cases in which the "memories" were proven to be nonsense — too many for the law, but not too many for the therapists.
and, to me, sounds ridiculous and completely non-scientific.
So does talk therapy, but it is also widely practiced as though it has a scientific foundation (it does not). Present clinical psychology is based on popularly held beliefs and very poor research.
In contrast, in modern psychology, counselling tends to include well researched ...
Stop! Did you actually read my article? Consider these points:
- Psychologists counsel teenagers to prevent them from committing suicide.
- Psychologists believe this counseling to be effective.
- But ... in order for that to be anything but a belief, there would have to be a scientific study — a scientific study — to validate the belief.
- Such a scientific study would require a valid experimental protocol, which means a double-blind design consisting of experimental and control groups.
- At the end of the study, we could compare the number of suicides among the experimental group, who received the test therapy, and the control group, who received a sham therapy.
- As described, the study would violate the rights of the subjects in the control group, which is why such a study has never been performed and will never be performed.
Therefore, no matter how strongly you feel about this, the present practice of human clinical psychology is not scientific. Rat psychology,
pigeon psychology, yes, scientific to a fare-thee-well, but not human psychology. Did I mention that pigeons don't commit suicide?
and successful methods such as Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy.
These practices are believed to be "successful" by people who haven't the slightest idea how success is measured in science. If 1,000 people take the therapy, and if all of them declare that they feel better, this can only represent an example of conjecture and a deplorable confusion of correlation and causation — until and unless there is a plausible control group: a control group who sincerely believes they are receiving treatment, administered by therapists who sincerely believe they are delivering effective treatment.
I have experienced this myself and found that it was extremely helpful.
Yes, "extremely helpful." Prefrontal lobotomies were also regarded as "extremely helpful," and keeping Eastern European Jewish immigrants out of the U.S. was regarded as "extremely helpful" during Hitler's reign, based on a deliberately rigged series of I.Q. tests (the psychologist responsible later confessed as much), and any number of other examples, all based on the spectacularly sloppy science that is common in human psychology.
Yes, talking to anyone can relieve distress (I am a suicide helpline volunteer, so I know this), but CBT goes a lot further and encourages a positive way of thinking.
Prove it. You are stating a belief, not a scientific finding. If a legitimate scientific study were to be designed, the researchers would be arrested and jailed before they could publish their results.
I definitely felt a great benefit.
My God. If only you could have learned even a small bit of science during your professional training, you would be profoundly embarrassed to speak this way.
Another thing which annoyed me about your essay (!) was that you seem to think that Psychology is all about therapies that I have never been taught about in my degree, and mental illness. There are many other areas of Psychology that are rigorously scientific ...
Utter nonsense. In any case, according to your remarks above, you felt better after experiencing therapy, and on that basis you conclude it must have been a scientific practice. This proves you are unqualified to evaluate what is and is not scientific.
and well respected:
Respect has no bearing on the issue under discussion. Authorities are respected, but science rejects all authority.
Cognitive Psychology, Neuropsychology, Biological Psychology, Developmental Psychology...the list goes on and on.
Indeed it does, and all of them are based on belief, not science. Prove me wrong — point out the studies that demonstrate the efficacy of any of these fields, studies with control groups composed of therapists and clients, both of whom sincerely believe they are engaged in real therapy.
Hint: there have never been such studies, anywhere, ever, because they would violate basic ethical standards as well as common sense.
I certainly feel I have been given a scientific education ...
And yet, as you have just proven, you are scientifically illiterate. You do not have the foggiest idea what constitutes a scientific finding.
and intend to go on to a career as a Counselling Psychologist...which will not result in me administering pseudoscientific fringe therapies to my clients!
No, certainly not, at least according to what you believe constitutes science. And that is by design, not by accident — your training doesn't include the fundamentals of science because it would cause all students above a certain minimal I.Q. to abandon the field.
Don't misunderstand the above remark. You are obviously thoughtful and intelligent, and it is equally obvious that you have been conned.
One final point: I think a lot of people believe Psychology is all about Freud and psychoanalysis, which is taught to [ ... ] University students, at the very least, as an example of how Psychology should NOT be: unfalsifiable, imaginary tosh.
It is all unfalsifiable. To falsify anything, real science would have to take place. Real science means real research, and real research requires rigorous and strict experimental designs. Such research is not carried out in human psychology.
I hope you can understand that Psychology is a varied and fascinating discipline, and most definitely scientific.
I hope you will eventually understand that waving your hands in the air cannot stand in for actual scientific research.
There is something you need to recognize about a debate like this — it doesn't matter how often you (or the many others who have tried this tactic) say "scientific" or "I felt better" — without repeatable scientific evidence, it's all cocktail chatter.
Here is a young woman, a newly minted psychologist with all the coursework fresh in her mind, willing to say such things as "I definitely felt a great benefit." and "I certainly feel I have been given a scientific education" without a hint of irony or self-consciousness. It is the business of science not to care how we feel about it — indeed, science's primary role is to separate evidence from how we feel about evidence. In that light, this young woman's remarks contradict themselves, but she can't see this. The reason? She doesn't know anything about science.
But she's certainly in touch with her feelings — among psychologists, that's a "good thing." I have no doubt she'll make a terrific psychologist. Science will just have to get along without her.
Psychology and Physics
I would like to ask how you can state that physics is a science and that psychology is not, when there is much evidence from physics which is used and applied within psychology.
You do realize, don't you, that in science we rely entirely on evidence? Where's the evidence for your statement? Which part of the scientific theory of physics is applied to psychology?
And do you think the application of a scientific principle from one field to a second automatically confers a scientific standing to the second? If this were true, astrology would become a science on the ground that astrologers look at stars just as astronomers do.
The similarity between astrology and astronomy lies in the attention given to stars and planets. The difference between astrology and astronomy lies in what the observers do with their results.
In other words, the distinction between astrology and astronomy lies, not in superficial outward appearance, but in substance.
Another example. If we conduct a careful scientific study of UFO sightings, does this confer a scientific standing to UFOs themselves, or only to the study?
Your Limited Understanding I
Just a very brief comment on your analysis of modern clinical psychology (CP). I think that while you are quite right to question clinical psychology from your (limited) understanding,
My understanding is not limited. I understand perfectly well that clinical psychology is not a science, and I understand why this is true. I understand this arises from its history, its traditions and its present form. Clinical psychology is not evidence-based, and its practitioners learn this during the more serious training programs.
that understanding is lacking in fundamental information
Nonsense. The fundamental information you are hinting at doesn't exist. Therapists sometimes kill their clients due to lack of discipline that a solid evidence-based foundation would provide. Such a foundation would greatly increase the standing of the field, but it simply does not exist.
As a result, in repeated studies, it is discovered that clinicians cannot agree on either diagnosis or therapy — both are based on personal judgment and whim, rather than a solid foundation of persuasive empirical evidence and an underlying basis in theory.
Clinical psychologists can do whatever they please because there is no possibility of proving that any specific practice is ineffective or harmful. Such proof would have to come from the conclusive falsification of any assertion about human psychology. Such a falsification would necessarily result from a strictly designed, scientific study, with a control and an experimental group, and neither group could know which they were.
Apart from the obvious ethical issues, once such a study were designed and conducted, the researchers and their institution would be sued by members of the experimental group — they would sue because they believed they were receiving a proven, efficacious treatment, not an experimental protocol. The control group would also sue, because they would discover they were getting the placebo, not anything even believed to be efficacious. But at the outset of the study, both the experimental and control groups must be told that they will receive efficacious treatment, in other words, the experimenters would have to lie. This is why such studies are never carried out, and this is why there is no science in clinical psychology.
When I hear from someone like you, someone who thinks there is science at work in clinical psychology, I realize I am dealing with a person who has no idea what constitutes science.
and as such does CP a very unjust representation.
When therapists kill their clients out of ignorance as has been reported in the literature, to describe clinical psychology as anything but a loosely grouped set of beliefs is the unjust representation.
When a prominent therapist at the Harvard Medical School asserts that alien abductees must be taken seriously, and UFO abductions represent reality, it becomes clear what standing clinical psychology has in the world of science.
You will find upon closer inspection that any clinical practice that is taught on doctoral training courses these days MUST be evidence based.
You are deliberately blurring the issue under discussion, or you are astonishingly ignorant of the kind of training clinical psychologists receive. Training in clinical psychology is not medical training, and clinical psychologists are not doctors. The fields are distinct and separate for a reason.
For example CBT (and yes there are others) is proven time after time to be an effective treatment
Complete nonsense. There never been a properly designed scientific study of CBT, with the kinds of controls required for a proper evaluation of the practice. The reason there have been no proper studies is that it would violate the rights of the clients. It is a basic ethical issue.
(equal to or more effective than medication)
This is astonishing. There is no scientific, evidentiary basis for this remark, as any serious researcher will tell you.
for many mental disorders (which, if left untreated are extremley disabling and have further more salient consequences).
You abandoned any pretense of serious argument with "if left untreated." First, it is false on its face — if left untreated, many conditions remit, but the results are lost because the subject is not part of a scientific study. If the subject is part of a study, nothing can be left untreated, for ethical reasons. This means there is no scientific basis for your remarks.
Factor/composition analysis confirm that it IS the CBT (which is very much based in scientific theroy)
I haver never seen so much intense hand-waving. CBT is not now, nor has it ever been, based on any kind of scientific evidence. This is well-understood by the more educated and serious practitioners of clinical psychology.
that is the effective agent in treatment before you start barking up that tree.
This may or may not be true, but it is pure conjecture. It has never been demonstrated in properly designed scientific research.
If you are going to comment in this fashion please have a look at the evidence first!
I have, and you very clearly have not. There is no evidence such as you describe. If there were, the researchers would be arrested for violating the rights of their experimental subjects.
A simple lack of understanding of a concept does not make it un-true.
And asserting that something is true without evidence is called "belief." Your remark above in essence says a proposition is true until it has been proven false. This is not how science or logic works, and it only reveals the gaps in your education.
a search on amazon for "science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology" would be a good start for you.
No, it would be a good start for you, although your complete lack of logical and critical thinking skills might turn the exercise into a minefield.
I realise that you did not refer to experimental psychology when you wrote this essay as EP is probably more grounded in empiricism than much of experimental physics and by your merit "more scientific".
Not really. Experimental psychology cannot control the practice of clinical psychology. The reason it cannot is because experimental psychology cannot produce the kind of evidence that meets the single most important property of a scientific theory, that of falsifiability.
Moreover, you do not refer to clinical neuropsychology which is 100% "scientific" and 100% psychology there is no arguing this point,
I agree without reservation — your knowledge of these topics is so superficial that there really is no possibility for arguing these points, for lack of a coherent, educated opponent.
yest this is a part of clinical psychology you chose to ignore?
"Clinical neuropsychology" is a bridge field meant to borrow status from mainstream medicine, in order to grant clinical psychology a standing it cannot achieve on its own. There are many similar bridge fields. They represent the activities of practitioners abandoning psychology in small steps.
I hope that in the future you will take time to properly research your topics or stick to your area of expertise.
You have failed to either address or refute any of the points in my research — not one. Your inability to grasp the present state of clinical psychology arises from the purest variety of ignorance.
Your Limited Understanding II
I simply could not read the entirety of your e-mail as i found it quite nonsensical.
Of course you did. You're not a scientist. You have no instinct for the topic, you don't understand how science works. If you witnessed an example in which a course of therapy was followed by a marked improvement in a client's condition, it would never occur to you to wonder if the outcome followed from the treatment or resulted from some other cause. You would be very likely to confuse correlation with causation, the error of a scientific illiterate.
The majority of what passes for science in psychology is of just that kind — the worshipful recording of superficial correlations, retrospective studies, no control groups, advocacy instead of research.
I am a doctoral trainee clinical psychologist in my first year in [ ... ] and i assure you evidence based practice is an absolute requirement of our practice, to do otherwise is quite illegal.
This is utter nonsense. Clinical psychology has no basis in science or evidence, as has been proven over and over again in research and courts of law. And the unscientific practice of clinical psychology is certainly not punished in courts of law, otherwise all the Freudian analysts would be arrested immediately.
You have no grasp of the real world, the world outside the classroom. You will eventually understand that world, and you will come to fully understand the nature and standing of clinical psychology.
Let's say a therapy exists that is believed to reduce the probability of teenage suicide. Some naïve soul decides to study this proposition scientifically. He designs an experiment consisting of experimental and control groups — teenagers thought to be at risk of suicide.
The first problem is the researcher would have to design a faux therapy for the control group, a therapy so convincing that neither the practitioners nor the subjects would realize they were members of the control group — supremely unlikely. The second problem is one of ethics — if there is any risk that the subjects might commit suicide, then the existence of the control group represents a violation of fundamental human rights. As a result, such studies are never performed, and the notion that a particular therapy is effective can only be a belief.
This is one of the basic limitations in psychological research, and it has many lesser forms. It prevents the generation of high quality scientific evidence about human behavior. You just don't understand the field, and saying "scientific" over and over again like a mantra cannot change this reality.
My undergraduate degree was in psychology and neuroscience and i found neuroscience to be no more or less 'scientific' in its approach, and this is the reality of the situation.
Yes, and I must agree — "no more or less scientific." When one compares apples and oranges, it's important to first establish the absolute ranking of the fruit basket taken as a whole.
Also, people have tried to legitimize clinical psychology by associating it with more substantive fields, but this doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of clinical practice consists of people talking to each other. Talk therapy is the most often practiced, and least understood, part of clinical practice. It is in the area of talk therapy that science has had no influence whatever.
I will not argue all of your points
You have yet to address a single substantive point in my article or during this exchange — in fact, you just confessed that you couldn't be bothered to fully read my earlier reply. So don't be annoyed if I have realistic expectations about this conversation.
simply one that of CBT [Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy]:
Quite simply searching CBT meta-analysis in any academic journal collections website (i'm assuming you know what this is) will give you countless validations of my statement of the effectiveness of CBT
For God's sake. The issue under discussion is not whether CBT is effective. The issue is whether that point has been demonstrated scientifically. It hasn't.
Don't you even realize this discussion, this issue, is not about whether clinical psychology works, but whether that point can be made in a scientific way?
There has never been a single scientific study of CBT, ever, anywhere in the world. Such a study would consist of experimental and control groups, and the control group would be provided with a fully convincing, sham therapy. For statistical validity, neither the therapists nor the clients could know which group they belonged to. This requirement is simultaneously essential and impossible.
Because CBT has not been studied scientifically, its efficacy has not been validated scientifically. CBT may be effective, or it may be indistinguishable from talking to a bartender. The point is, from a scientific standpoint, no one knows.
In the Wikipedia entry for CBT, I find this quote:
"The American Psychiatric Association Practice Guidelines (April 2000) indicated that among psychotherapeutic approaches, cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy had the best-documented efficacy for treatment of major depressive disorder, although they noted that rigorous evaluative studies had not been published."
The reason those studies have not been published is because they have not been performed. The above quote shows psychologists freely acknowledging that their strongly held beliefs are not based in science.
moreover, this is a well know extremely well documented fact and simply taking the time to look will illuminate this.
I just did, it's above, and it shows you are mistaken in the most trivial way. At some point in your life, you will learn what science is, and you will recognize that it moves beyond endless repetitions of the word "science" in the apparent hope that the genie can be made to appear by calling out its name.
Ultimately, your failure to identify psychology as the science that it is is the result of a grander global misunderstanding of the world around you and an ignorance in looking beyond the limited scope of your satisfied intelligence.
You know, you should try getting this "proof" of the scientific standing of psychology into a reputable, peer-reviewed science journal. At the moment, because of your training, you think arguing leads to science, and you have no idea how contentless your argument is. Which means you are in the right field for your talents — you will fit into psychology just fine.
In the most true sense you can never hope to be a scientist
In point of fact, I am a scientist, not that this bears on the matter under discussion, since, contrary to your present belief system, science proceeds through open-minded evaluation of evidence, not by way of persistent argument for one viewpoint.
as your hopes to understand the world have nothing to do with truth.
Beyond all others, this particular sentence dramatically reveals your ignorance of science. Science is not about truth, and a scientific theory is never proven true. Scientific theories can only ever be proven false.
Your Limited Understanding III
I am quite confused by your statements indicating CBT is not scientifically verified.
These are not my statements, they are the statement of psychologists. Example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
A quote:
"The American Psychiatric Association Practice Guidelines (April 2000) indicated that among psychotherapeutic approaches, cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy had the best-documented efficacy for treatment of major depressive disorder, although they noted that rigorous evaluative studies had not been published."
The expression "rigorous evaluative studies had not been published" means exactly what it says — studies have not been published for the simple reason that they have not been conducted. Which of the above words didn't you understand? Why would these professionals deliberately insert such an undermining subjunctive if it didn't mean exactly what it says?
My regular readers may wonder why I inserted the same reference twice. The answer is simple — this budding scientist isn't bothering to read my replies, as he admitted is his prior post. My hope is that by placing the quote near the top of my reply, he might accidentally spot it.
Has it been tested against control groups.. why of course it has.
This statement is false, you are ignorant of the literature on this topic, and you have no idea what you are talking about. It is not lost on me that you haven't even tried to produce any evidence for this claim — it doesn't exist, as freely acknowledged by psychologists.
Cbt is consistently proven more effective than, for example, Freudian Psychoanalysis,
This is a red herring. Neither has been meaningfully compared to sitting under a tree, and neither has been rigorously studied in a strict experimental protocol. And your use of the word "proven" in this context only reveals your ignorance of science. Scientific theories are never proven, they are either supported or disproven.
do you think that this is a legal practice for clinical psychologists?
Anything a clinical psychologist chooses to do is ipso facto legal, until and unless the client dies. What planet are you visiting from? Do you read the newspaper?
By the way. I have to point out that, if what you claimed were true, if psychologists could not practice anything not already demonstrated in research, this would prove that they are not scientists. The assertion is false, but if it were true, it would contradict your position that science is taking place, because scientists must have more behavioral latitude than this. Contrary to what you seem to believe, science is not the rote application of tradition.
But this entire exchange is tainted by the fact that you don't know enough about science to craft an argument for or against it.
It is not, and no psychologist i know of would attempt to employ this pseudoscience.
You are completely and perfectly isolated from reality. Virtually all of clinical psychology is pseudoscience. None of it can be, or has ever been, falsified, including many things once widely practiced but that have fallen into disfavor. An example is Freudian analysis, still widely practiced by fully licensed professionals, who, unlike psychologists, really are doctors — a step taken to increase the weight given to their opinions, after the bankruptcy of their belief system became apparent.
On point — Freudian analysis has never been falsified, even though this would greatly increase the present standing of human psychology. It cannot be falsified without crossing the line into unethical research.
I think the main problem here is your idea of what constitutes a psychologist and to be fair, much of this is a failure in regulation.
You have left the original topic, I have no interest in discussing what you think constitutes appropriate regulation, because it is too far removed from the original topic.
In the UK the term Chartered Clinical Psychologist is the only one protected by the law.
Legal protection doesn't address the scientific standing of a field. Astrologers are protected by the law. Fortunetellers are protected by the law. And psychologists cannot be protected against the ponderous legal machinery that begins to move once a client decides to sue her therapist on any basis whatever, real or imaginary.
It appears your knowledge of law is on a par with your knowledge of science. Legal protection doesn't confer the status you seem to believe it does.
As such, anyone can call themselves a clinical psychologist/ psychologist without question and practice fringe therapies the kind of which you are referring to, indeed many "therapists" do this and there is nothing CP can do to resolve this issue at present although this will change in the next couple of years.
You are slipping. It wasn't very long ago that you were arguing that psychological practice was grounded in science. Now you are arguing that there is nothing the regulatory agencies can do about the fact that it is not scientific. Do you sometimes re-read your own words?
Quite simply, not everyone who calls themselves a psychologist is one,
This argues that there are real psychologists and phonies, but the latter can practice anyway. This doesn't work in science, where there are real scientists and those who cannot get funding because of the poor quality of their work. In other words, your point undermines your position.
and not all psychologist do adhere to proper practice guidelines (however they do this through private practice loopholes).
More of the same. You are now officially on the slippery slope.
However this behaviour is common to all scientists,
That's false, and you seem to believe that scientists define science. It's the other way around. In any case, scientists would never get away with what psychologists regularly do.
there are many medical doctors who practice Homeopathy, for example, which has no evidence base, physicists who preach about the possibility of supernatural phenomenon without any evidence,
More examples of your utter confusion about the nature of science. A scientist may certainly hypothesize about something, for example time travel, but there are two conditions — one, the hypothesizing is clearly labeled as such, and two, eventually there must be some evidence.
In psychology, by contrast, people were having icepicks inserted into their pre-frontal lobes, people were being thrown in jail based on imaginary recovered memories, before any effort was made to establish an evidentiary basis for these practices.
these people will present in all disciplines regardless.
Well, now that you have demolished your own position, I don't think there's much for me to do except agree with you. In scientific fields, by contrast, people who try to assert nonsense are harshly dealt with. In a recent example, Nobel Prizewinner James Watson, world-famous co-discoverer of DNA, made what he regarded as reasonable remarks about the intelligence of black people in a scientific forum where his remarks might be misconstrued to constitute scientific evidence. As a result, he was immediately stripped of all his professional responsibilities and forced into retirement.
By contrast, in the 1960s prominent psychologist Bruno Bettelheim asserted that autism resulted from emotionally frigid "refrigerator moms" who were unable to bond with their children. This false belief persisted for decades without benefit of evidence, solely because its originator was an eminent psychologist, in a field where eminence trumps evidence.
Those two anecdotes aptly demonstrate the distinction between psychology and science.
Getting back on topic though, CBT is scientifically verified
You have yet to discover this is false, and finding proof that it is false is child's play. I did it above, my effort required fifteen seconds, and you are deliberately avoiding any evidence that contradicts your beliefs.
and indeed these "faux" therapies you describe (to be used as control measures/placebo therapies) do very much exist (for example comparing them to nonsense therapies such as psychoanalysis which are well known by psychologists to be nonsense) and there are clever ways of getting 'around' ethics.
Yes, there are, like repeating the word "science" over and over, without trying to discover what it is.
Moreover there are other means by which we can create control conditions,
There is precisely one way to create a valid control group, and the analysis of what constitutes a valid control group contains no room for the wiggles you seem so fond of.
and a quick skim of the literature will describe these procedures.
The same quick scan reveals psychologists freely acknowledging that their practice is not scientific. See above.
To be honest i simply do not understand your objection at this time,
That is because you won't allow yourself to read evidence that contradicts what you already believe — it's a behavior called "confirmation bias." Ten years from now, you will have either abandoned any effort to learn science, or you will understand the points I have made.
the reasons you give do not consider the evidence i am suggesting (which is generally accepted by others in the scientific community).
1. This reference to "others in the scientific community" is a logical error called "argumentum ad verecundiam" (argument from authority). Scientists learn to avoid this gaffe very early in their professional training.
2. That defect aside, it's false. Scientists understand all too well that clinical psychology is not evidence-based. Even psychologists recognize this — see above and below for examples.
3. The above tortured sentence suggests that the burden of evidence is mine. But, because psychologists agree that their field is not scientific, and because there is no contrary evidence, the burden is yours.
Here is an example of the panic that is being caused by the idea of trying to base clinical psychology on scientific evidence:
Evidence-based practice in psychology (APA)
A quote:
"Some APA members have asked me why I have chosen to sponsor an APA Presidential Initiative on Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) in Psychology, expressing fears that the results might be used against psychologists by managed-care companies and malpractice lawyers."
A fair condensation of the article is that practicing psychologists realize they are at risk from any effort to create a new requirement that scientific evidence govern what they do. It has never been true and if it became true it would cause huge disruptions in the everyday practice of clinical psychology.
The problem is that medical funding agencies are considering not paying for any treatments that are not based in scientific evidence. Since virtually no part of clinical psychology is based in scientific evidence, clinicians are in a panic and an uproar about this proposal, and as a result it hasn't gotten anywhere since 2005.
You know, if you actually tried to do your own research, like a scientist, you would find copious references to these controversies without my having to spoon-feed them to you.
Denying the theory behind CBT
There is no "theory" behind CBT. It is believed to work, the belief is not based in scientific evidence, that was my original point, and based on the content of your reply, you have come around to reluctant agreement.
is in fact denying the HUGE evidence base for Cognitive science which is very much a falsifiable science,
Stop wandering away from the topic. Clinical psychology is not science, it is not falsifiable, and no part of it has ever been falsified. The "Recovered Memory" fad has been substantially debunked and many wrongly jailed people have been freed, courts of law have ruled that no more cases based solely on recovered memories will be heard, but the practice continues to exist because some people continue to believe in it, and it cannot be falsified in rigorous scientific studies.
The "Facilitated Communication" fad has similarly been substantially debunked, many wrongly jailed people have been freed. In essence, the same sequence of events as above.
There are any number of similar examples stretching across the entire history of human psychology — deliberate misuses of IQ testing to discriminate against minority groups, the practice of pre-frontal lobotomy, chemical lobotomy, ad infinitum. None of these practices has ever been scientifically falsified, but all of them are now frowned upon based on the perception that they were mistakes.
and behaviourism is simply a sound theory for understanding most animals (mammals certainly).
Animals are not people. They don't have human rights, therefore they can be studied in more effective experiments, experiments that would violate the rights of human subjects. Unfortunately the topic is human psychology. Rats don't commit suicide. Pigeons don't lie.
Indeed, Psychology is involved closely with othersciences as you have suggested ,
I suggested nothing of the kind. Psychology is not a science.
however this is simply a product of the nature of the investigation, how could it be otherwise?
I wish it were hotter in this room, so your valiant hand-waving would serve some useful purpose.
Your Limited Understanding IV
Your last e-mail was very infromative to me and has helped me to realise that you are indeed not concerned with scientific standing but maintenance of your idealistic understanding, perhaps when you encounter real scientific work you will better understand.
I see you once again failed to read what I posted, or click the links to the evidence I provided. You believe you are arguing with an individual scientist, while the provided evidence shows you are arguing against the most fundamental definitions in the field of human psychology, definitions crafted by better-educated psychologists in their own interest.
When psychologists learned in 2005 that they may eventually have to meet scientific standards in order to satisfy granting agencies, they howled in protest, because they understood this change would undermine nearly all present clinical practice. It is this reality that you are arguing with, not any individual.
Also, when you deliberately turn away from the readily available evidence in the psychological literature in order to mount a personal attack, you are only revealing your present limited grasp of science. Science is not an argument between people, it is a test of observations and evidence with a posture of humility and an open mind.
The only way you will ever extricate yourself from your present ideological mental trap is to change your way of thinking about the world. Abandon your present belief that there is a single right answer to every question and begin to examine reality as though there is a legitimate viewpoint other than your own.
Start here:
- Evidence-based practice in psychology (APA): "Some APA members have asked me why I have chosen to sponsor an APA Presidential Initiative on Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) in Psychology, expressing fears that the results might be used against psychologists by managed-care companies and malpractice lawyers."
- Unscientific Psychology: "Arguing that psychology is a pseudoscientific hoax, the authors deconstruct three of its most powerful myths: the myth of the individual; the myth of mental illness; and the myth of development."
- What's wrong with psychology anyway? (excerpt): "This chapter considers various factors that have been responsible for the comparatively slow development of psychology into a cumulative empirical science. Special attention is devoted to correctable methodological mistakes, the over-reliance upon significance testing (and the fact that, in psychology, the null hypothesis is almost always false), and an analysis of the concept of replication."
- McFall's Manifesto: "I sometimes suspect that many psychologists view serious proposals for scientific standards in practice and training as a betrayal ..."
This four-part exchange shows a student at first arguing vehemently from a position of perfect igonrance, then, as he realizes the flaws in his position, gradually shutting his mind down, riveting his attention, not on the evidence, but on its source. Unfortunately, in the field of psychology none of his colleagues or professors will be likely to call him on this intellectually dishonest behavior. He appears to be a clinical narcissist with the usual dim prospects for recovery. In other words, he'll fit into psychology just fine.
Quasi-scientific I
Don't know if the article I'm writing to you about is still open for comment but it's worth a shot.
Oh, the article definitely remains open for comment. That's how science works — issues are never closed, no matter how settled they may appear.
I'm in my fourth yr of Psychology at the moment and I'm about to write a short essay where I give my opinion on whether or not Psychology is a science. Obviously, I found your article very interesting.
Thanks!
I did my undergraduate at a University where psych. is taught in the Arts faculty (this is where I think it belongs). I'm now at a Uni where Psych is taught as a science and it is greatly emphasized that Behaviourism rules and CBT (because it has scientific support) is the only therapy worth talking about.
I have some bad news for you. CBT doesn't have scientific support. CBT has its standing among psychologists because of reputation, not research. But reputation, strong or not, is still reputation, and the claims made for CBT are based on uncontrolled comparisons, not scientific experiments.
This is what Wikipedia says about CBT:
"The American Psychiatric Association Practice Guidelines (April 2000) indicated that among psychotherapeutic approaches, cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy had the best-documented efficacy for treatment of major depressive disorder, although they noted that rigorous evaluative studies had not been published."
The reason those studies have not been published is because they have not been conducted. How do I know this? Because science is what is published, not what is kept secret. If grants are issued for research, and if the research is conducted and passes muster with the scientists who review the work, then it is published — always. If it isn't published, it doesn't exist — those are science's rules.
CBT has been informally compared to other practices, but it has never been rigorously studied in a serious research program. Given all that has been written about CBT, what would constitute "serious research"? Well, the only valid way to study CBT would be to create a control group that would receive a believable placebo therapy. The clients would have to believe it, and the therapists would have to believe it.
If the clients or the therapists realized they were the control group, the study would have no meaning. I hope you understand the argument — such a study is not practical, and if this were not true, ethical issues would prevent it from going forward (the study would violate the clients' rights).
So no, CBT is not scientific. Its efficacy is based on conjecture, not research. This is not meant to argue that it has no value, only that its value has not been established using acceptable scientific standards.
Because of all the things you have talked about, I don't think the study of human experience that is psychology can be a scientific pursuit. But I feel that you are saying that because it can't be studied scientifically, it's not a worthy pursuit.
I have never taken that position. It is not an issue I have ever broached. The problem with clinical psychology is that people think it's based in science, and it isn't. This gives the actions of psychologists a weight — in everyday life and in courts of law — that is not based in reality.
If astrology is a worthy pursuit, then psychology is a worthy pursuit. That is why I have never raised the issue you mention.
Psychology was only ever brought into the "lab" and disguised as a science so people (such as yourself) might take it seriously.
That's pretty funny, because like most scientists, I would take psychology more seriously if it didn't try to deceive the public about its scientific standing.
With science 'King', if you're not wearing a white coat and doing things the way Popper said they should be done, people won't listen to you.
On the contrary. Plenty of people listen to astrologers — in fact, there are 1500 professional astronomers, but 15,000 professional astrologers, at work in the U.S.. That should give you some idea of the weight given to science in modern times.
Also, doing research provides no assurance that science is taking place. In his famous article "Cargo Cult Science," Nobel Prizewinner Richard Feynman takes psychology to task for its tendency to imitate scientific procedures while avoiding any substance.
But Philosophy is, has and always will be a worthy pursuit of study and enquiry and there's no falsifiability going on there.
Philosophy has the lowest rank of any academic field — it represents the bottom of the pile. A philosophy degree is no less than a guarantee of future unemployment. This is because philosophy has more content, and less relevance, than any other academic field. One way to rank it is to note its staggeringly poor ratio of words to useful ideas.
But don't rely on a student counselor to tell you this. Most student counselors are employees of their schools, therefore they cannot reveal this secret and remain employed.
The same can be said about psychology, which commands the attention of a very large percentage of the student population, primarily because it is a terribly easy course of study, but a psychology degree has a low status in the world outside the university.
The quasi-scientific methods that Psychological research uses have been extremely beneficial in understanding psychological issues and developing treatment.
Nonsense. One cannot legitimately use expressions like "extremely beneficial" about clinical psychology unless there is some scientific work to back it up. Again, I'm not saying it's false, I am saying it's not known.
The same claims were made for psychoanalysis until they were finally debunked by the sheer weight of evidence that it had no effect.
Nothing is so tragicomic as the image of schizophrenics suffering through years of pointless talk therapy, when a tiny bit of science would eventually suggest a daily dose of lithium instead.
And the expression "quasi-scientific" ranks with being a little bit pregnant. Something is either scientific or it isn't. Science isn't something you sneak up on and wrestle to the ground.
Your point about the dangers of relying on Psychological evidence in legal matters when the evidence is not a scientific "truth" is a most valid one as is the concerns you raised about treatments actually causing harm. But we don't have a case of Psychology not using science properly, it's that it can't be done scientifically at all.
But the problem is not that fact, the problem is that psychologists do all they can to present psychology as a science, whole avoiding actually doing any science.
For example, when the president of the APA made a 2005 proposal to overhaul the field and create something called "Evidence-based practice" (EBP), the idea was shouted down by rank and file psychologists who immediately saw the danger — this would produce an expectation the field simply cannot meet.
The outrage sprang, not from the fact that scientific standards aren't practical in clinical psychology, but that this is a thinly guarded secret.
Does that mean that if theories and treatments can't be grounded in science, then we should just not worry about them?
I have taken the opposite position — because clinical treatments can't be grounded in science, that is a reason to worry about them, hence my article.
I see problems with the current (and future) state of Psychology coming from two kinds of people. There are the ones who insist that it's a science and therefore only recognise the aspects of the field that can be scientifically "backed-up" (i.e. is CBT the most efficacious treatment we have or is it only widely given that title because it's the most "sciency" one?).
I like "sciency" — that's a nice coinage, and completely appropriate to the topic. In the same way that "chocolaty" means "resembling chocolate, but not the genuine article," "sciency" means "resembling science ...".
But, as educated psychologists are quick to point out, CBT is not based in science. That is a confession psychologists wouldn't make if they didn't have to.
Then there are the people that think the whole thing is airy-fairy BS because it's not science.
People who take that position miss the point that something not grounded in science is neither true nor false. Relativity was always true, but until 1905 it wasn't even a scientific hypothesis. Astrology was always false, but until it was studied, it was false without the benefit of science.
Put simply, I kinda always saw Psychology as a perfect fit in between the science of Physiology and studies of Sociology.
But without solid science, we can't rank fields that way. A field is not ranked by how desperately its practitioners want it to be thought scientific, but how scientific it actually is.
Quasi-scientific II
I'm a bit confused about one point in your reply........
I was tentative about labelling you as someone who won't take something serious if it isn't science. When I was reading some of the other replies in this topic, I'm pretty sure you stated that this was not your position. But through many other comments you've made, it definitely sounded like that is your stance. In your reply, after stating that, "I have never taken that position", you go on to say, "One cannot legitimately use expressions like 'extremely beneficial' about clinical psychology unless there is some scientific work to back it up. Again, I'm not saying it's false, I am saying it's not known." Pls correct me if I'm wrong but this sounds like your saying that if a theory (treatment, whatever) can't be "known" on a scientific model, the it shouldn't be applied.
Rather than trying to put words into my mouth, why not simply read what I've written? I have never said a treatment shouldn't be applied unless it has a scientific basis. I will let the courts decide that, as they have for the now-discredited clinical practice of "recovered memory" therapy, which has produced so much injustice that U.S. courts have finally ruled they will no longer accept cases in which recovered memories are the primary evidence.
In the same way, I will let the courts decide that "rebirthing therapy" is dangerous and sometimes deadly, now that there is a body count associated with the practice, and now that therapists and parents have been jailed for practicing it.
Why don't I say this about CBT, even though it isn't scientific? The answer is simple — no one has died yet. Once someone dies, or once people realize there's no distinction between CBT and talking to a sympathetic friend, the practice will self-destruct, as psychoanalysis did before it. My opinion doesn't matter.
There simply is no reason to stop a practice solely because it isn't based in science. If there were, astrologers would be driven out of business.
The problem is that psychologists do all they can to present clinical psychology as a scientific pursuit, in all venues except the "inner circle" of professional meetings and publications, where there is more frankness and candor. A bigger problem is an uneducated public, a public who believe science is based on authority rather than evidence, who believe that saying "science" is the same as doing science.
On one hand aren't you saying that the very nature of psychology means that it can't be studied scientifically and on the other hand, saying that until it's done scientifically, we shouldn't listen to it.
Again, you need to read more carefully — I have never taken this position. It's perfectly fine that people listen to psychologists, but with the same posture of skepticism they give an astrologer or a bartender. To earn more respect, psychologists would have to be practicing a science.
People who make the mistake of granting a psychologist more respect than an astrologer sometimes end up in jail, after the legal system holds them personally responsible for the consequences of their misplaced trust.
Pre-frontal lobotomies were carried out on hundreds of people solely because of a misperception that clinical psychology is grounded in science. Racist policies have been crafted by racist psychologists, using rigged I.Q. tests and other methods, policies that have had far-reaching effects on various minority groups, solely because clinical psychology has been assumed to be a science.
I have agreed with you that the insistence of some Psychologists to call their work science isn't helping. But I didn't use the term "extremely beneficial" because of any scientific evidence, I used it because a great number of people have and will continue to be helped by psychological treatment - regardless of whether it's science or not.
As an educated person you should be embarrassed to make this claim. Without scientific evidence, your claim is nothing more than a failure to distinguish between correlation and causation, or a case of the placebo effect.
You desperately need to learn the "null hypothesis," one of the cornerstones of modern scientific thought. In its simplest form, the null hypothesis says that a claim is assumed to be false until scientific evidence argues that it's true (it is to science what the presumption of innocence is to law). You have just assumed something to be true with no evidence.
All you can honestly say is that people report they feel better after seeing a psychologist. But instead you said people were "helped by psychological treatment," which is a claim without any evidentiary basis (something psychologists freely admit). Do you see the difference? One states a correlation, the other tries to assign a cause to the correlation, but without evidence.
This is the bottom line, the clockwork of the modern world, the place where the rubber meets the road. This is how science works. Nothing can be assumed, everything depends on evidence.
You're being educated at a university, but you don't understand the basics of science or critical thinking. I would be shocked and dismayed at this level of ignorance in a fourth-year university student, except that you're being trained as a psychologist, and your professors realize teaching you how to think would ruin everything.
Quasi-scientific III
I have enjoyed sharing these thoughts with you and your website seems like a good place to discuss some really interesting stuff. I must say though that you do come across as being very aggressively argumentative. I guess there is nothing "science-like" about interpersonal, communication and social skills so they don't bother learnin' you about these things in yer fancy science school.
I attended no "fancy science school". Your present university environment is much more formal and rich than any school I ever attended.
You do seem very angry.
At the moment, only you are angry. Did they teach you about "projection" in your psychology courses?
I'm wondering what your childhood was like. Have you ever talked to anyone about this?
Have you leaned yet what "argumentum ad hominem" means? You've abandoned the topic of discussion in order to attack your opponent personally. This can only reveal the weakness of your position.
In my last post I described you as ignorant. This is manifestly true, and it is not at all personal. It's not a comment about you, but about present psychology training.
Let's stay with the topic.
It's your fault that Psychologists are still getting around saying that they are scientists.
How is that my fault? The President of the APA has recently taken the same position I have, and has argued that psychologists had better establish a scientific basis for clinical practice or this will be imposed on them from outside.
You are doing a pretty good job in trying to convince me that you don't believe treatment shouldn't be applied unless it has a scientific basis and that you think that Psychologists should be listened to even though they're not scientists.
Because you mangled the sentence, I am not sure there is any point in trying to reply to it as written. If you actually meant to say that you think I have argued psychology shouldn't be applied until it's scientific, I can only say, "where's the evidence?" I have never said or implied this, anywhere.
But you go and follow it up by saying that a Psychologist can offer no more help than a bartender or a good friend.
I never said that either. I said there's no scientific evidence to support the idea that clinical psychology works better than a conversation with an astrologer, a bartender or a sympathetic friend — note the emphasis on "scientific evidence."
Saying there's no scientific evidence for proposition X doesn't mean proposition X is false, and we've already covered this ground.
Healthy skepticism is good but that is not how you are treating Psychology.
That is exactly, precisely how I am treating psychology. I recommend it to you. You've recently taken the position that people are "helped by psychological treatment — regardless of whether it's science or not." This remark doesn't survive any kind of critical scrutiny.
You just got no room in your head for things that are un-science.
The topic is whether clinical psychology is based in science, so an emphasis on science is essential to examining the issue.
Psychological research has shown that CBT helps people.
Professional psychologists disagree with you, and I have quoted them to that effect. CBT is thought to be efficacious, but this is not based on "rigorous studies." That wording comes from the definition of CBT.
So does talk therapy.
Same answer. The psychologists responsible for defining psychological treatments disagree vehemently, and without reservation, with the position you have taken.
Now, as you've made clear, this research doesn't interest you
I have examined the research, you have not, it's high time that you do just that. I have quoted extensively from the psychological literature during this exchange, and you have expressed your personal opinions.
and you think that no-one should listen to it because it's not science.
I have never said this, in fact I have expressly taken the opposite position. You are inventing a position for me. What you are doing is called the "straw man" tactic.
You said that, "To earn more respect, psychologists would have to be practicing a science". But you know that Psychology can't be studied scientifically.
In its present form, that's true, as psychologists openly acknowledge.
Thanks for pointing out the correlation not equalling causation bizzo, but I already knowed this.
You already "knowed this"?
I'm happy to go with a correlation (leave causation) between psychotherapy and someone feeling better.
Yes, and as I have pointed out, this is an example of intellectual bankruptcy.
Of course I want to know, but for now, I don't care why the person feels better.
You know, it might be a good idea to review what you've written before sending your messages off through the ether. The problem with clinical psychology is that its practitioners typically don't know or care whether their claims can be tested. You are in your fourth year at university, you will likely become a psychologist, and you ... "don't care why the person feels better". It seems the system works.
The fact is, they do.
Yes, that's a fact ... they do (clients say they feel better after psychological treatments). What is unknown is whether they would have felt better as a result of a placebo sugar pill, a visit to an astrologer, or sitting in a dark room. These alternative explanations have not been rigorously evaluated, as clearly acknowledged in the published description of CBT.
I don't even disagree with you that talking to a friend or a bartender might work just as well.
Well, that's a small step.
But you do go out don't you? The only bartenders you ever see aren't just the ones in the movies? You'd be lucky to find one standing there wiping a glass just waiting to listen to all your troubles. Most would tell you "to pissoff, I got my only problems". Unfortunately, there a lots of qualified Psychologists who, while not many would tell you piss off, aren't much good either. But the odds of finding a good one are better than looking for the all caring bartender.
Prove it or don't post it. That would be a good practical rule, and it would show that attending university has had a salutary effect on your thinking.
You advised me to go away and learn about null-hypothe..something or other.
Well, I don't think "something or other" will quite meet the need. The "null hypothesis" is one of the first things a scientist learns in training, along with the requirement for falsifiability.
You also point out your shocking dismayance that I'm a Uni. student but I'm not learning science. But did I mention that I'm studying Psychology?
Did I mention that clinical psychology is about to be either overhauled or abandoned, because of the increasing public awareness that it is not scientific? That's the essence of the recent Presidential Initiative by the head of the APA, who said, "... psychology needs to define EBP [Evidence-Based Practice] in psychology or it will be defined for us. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines."
You are not studying psychology as it will be in a few years — you are studying psychology as it was, and will never be again. It's time to wake up and smell the cappuccino.
Why would I need to learn science to be able to study something that you said can't be studied scientifically?
In its present form, because of ethical and practical constraints, clinical psychology cannot be based in science. This doesn't mean that some other science of mind cannot be crafted to solve this problem.
150 years ago, people were drawing far-reaching conclusions by measuring the bumps on people's heads, and that was the "mental science" of the day. More recently, people sat around and talked about their childhoods, as though that were the answer to mental dysfunctions (it wasn't).
Then someone got the idea to stick an icepick in a patient's frontal lobes and spin it around until the patient became more manageable. Maybe a little scientific study could have prevented that entire sad chapter.
My point? The amount of science in clinical psychology is not an abstract issue with no practical consequences — clients are being maltreated, sometimes killed, and this is inexcusable. Because of some dangerous clinical practices, and because the efficacy of treatments cannot be established using present methods, scientific standards will be forced on psychologists whether they welcome it or not.
Comes back to you and that science, the whole science and nothing but the science head of yours.
I want to assure my regular readers that I am not making this correspondent up. I have not changed a word of his prose — not one word.
In your first reply, you said that a degree in Psychology was not only next to worthless,
I never said that, so I don't have to defend it.
but that it is so easy to pass.
That's true, and it is a fact openly acknowledged within higher education.
(I know this sounds like I'm pissing in my own pocket but bad luck) anyone who has successfully completed a Psych degree and found it easy, has wasted their time and money.
Perhaps anyone who successfully completes a psychology degree and found it terribly difficult doesn't belong in the university system. Just my opinion.
Like many courses, you can pass by simply memorising definitions and theories - that way, it is easy, but you don't get much out of it.
How much did you personally get out of it? You haven't learned any science, and science is the cornerstone of modern intellectual life.
My personal view is that studying psychology without also studying science is an intellectual crime that has no name.
To understand it, is a totally different story. But we're all different. Psychology can't exactly explain why, but we are. Some of us, for example, are thinkers whereas others become scientists.
Humans are all thinkers. Some of us, motivated to organize our thinking, learn science and logic.
Quasi-scientific IV
The big problem with making Psychology scientific (evidence based practice), is that one day, someone might just come up with a theory and practice that meets the strict criteria of what is science. That theory and it's practice will then become the one and only (at least as far the public and funding agencies are concerned).
That's not how science works, and it isn't consistent with the history of fields where science holds sway. For most disciplines with scientific content, our understanding and methods change over time as we learn more.
For example, in mainstream medicine, there are always studies underway, revisions to what we think we know, and those changes filter down into clinical practice. The clients don't say, "Hold on! This is different!" Instead they appreciate the fact that researchers are learning as much as possible as fast as possible, and applying the new findings to clinical practice as soon as they show consistent, repeatable results.
In psychology, because clinical practice isn't research-driven, things move at a much slower pace. Usually a method is abandoned because of a general sense that it doesn't work or it has undesirable aftereffects, like pre-frontal lobotomy, usually by word of mouth and informal conversations between practitioners.
We've already covered the reasons why in its present form clinical psychology can't be research-driven, but it's not obvious how to get around this problem. My primary objection to current practice is that people proceed as though clinical practice is based on research, sometimes with disastrous results ("recovered memory therapy", "facilitated communication", and so forth).
This is why CBT currently has so much funding support (Medi-Care rebates).
Except this is changing, at least in the U.S.. Funding agencies have become aware of the poor evidence for things like CBT, and have also noticed that, once it starts, it never ends, because there are no unambiguous criteria for a "cure". This has produced a clamor for clear diagnostic criteria, e. g. what the client is suffering from, what the appropriate treatment is and exactly how long the treatment will last. Needless to say, none of these questions have been answered in any rigorous way.
CBT, while it doesn't satisfy your criteria (sorry, I shouldn't say "your" cos then you'll have to go to the trouble of saying something like, "It's not my criteria, science is science......) of science, it's the closest anyone has come up with for a scientific, evidence based psychotherapy.
Unfortunately, as psychologists reluctantly admit, CBT isn't really based on scientific research. Rigorous studies have been proposed many times, but they are invariably scuttled by a fear that the outcome will support the null hypothesis — that is to say, the result won't turn out to be correlated with the treatment.
The problem is that clinical psychologists have the cart before the horse — they are practicing something that hasn't been researched yet. Because it's practiced, it represents someone's bread and butter, and those practitioners don't want new research findings to undermine their livelihood. This, by the way, is why "facilitated communication" still has a large, loyal following, years after it has been demonstrated to be nonsense.
But this is a shame. CBT (and maybe the magical scientific one that might be discovered one day) doesn't work as well for some people as it does for others.
Which inevitably leads people to question whether it's working at all. If a placebo and a miracle drug both have the same effect, it's reasonable to ask whether the drug is the appropriate treatment.
For some people, with some problems, psychoanalysis is more helpful.
Actually, is reported to be more helpful. Don't forget the self-reporting problem. In a recent study, people in group A were given what they were told was a ten-cent pill, group B was given what they were told was a $2.50 pill (both identical placebos). Group B reported they felt better than group A.
Don't say prove it cos no-one can. Science can only study what science can study.
Actually, science is the only way to know whether the claims are valid. Saying "psychoanalysis is more helpful" compares psychoanalysis to CBT for a specific client with a specific condition at a specific time, and it relies on the client's sincerity and accuracy in reporting. It doesn't ask whether something else — or nothing at all — applied over a period of years might have produced the same outcome.
The classic hidden assumption in psychological practice is that the treatments led to the result. No one wants to risk a lawsuit by withholding or modifying treatment in a way calculated to explore these unanswered questions.
In your original essay about this topic, you included a youtube link to a video made by the church of scientology (featuring Fred Baughman who professes that ADHD, Depression and other illnesses are an invention of drug companies)
Wouldn't it be great if there were solid scientific evidence to counter such a claim? It sounds like a wacko's paranoid fantasy and deserves to be refuted, unfortunately there are no scientific results available to refute it, to clearly say what these conditions are and how to treat them. Without scientific results, we are left with cocktail chatter and a philosophical debating society. In other words, we are left with conversations like this one.
As to the Church of Scientology's campaign against psychiatrists and their having funded the video under discussion, I wish they weren't on my side. But evidence is evidence, and it's a classic mistake to attack the source rather than the evidence.
where Psychiatrists were admitting that there are no biological tests and no cures for mental illness. That's what I've been taught too.
That's a good starting point for understanding the field's present state.
I've also been taught though that there is plenty of evidence from clinical experience upon which to base assessment and guide treatment of mental illness.
Unfortunately, in that body of "evidence", there are only comparisons between treatment A and treatment B, like CBT and psychoanalysis as in your example above. There are no studies that stretch the paradigm, like comparing CBT to conversations with a sympathetic friend or playing with a friendly dolphin (something I've experienced and can recommend). There are powerful forces arrayed against such a research program, forces the President of the APA experienced firsthand after writing his Evidence-Based Practice initiative in 2005. I think he was genuinely shocked to discover the level of fear and outrage his proposal created.
Take a deep breath before you throw that bunsen burner through the computer screaming, "the evidence isn't scientific I tells ya". Science can't and shouldn't be the guide of all enquiry.
That's true, but this isn't "all enquiry," this is a field with an undeserved association with science. Science must be recognized — indeed, has been recognized — as the preferred approach where health and safety are at stake. It's how we might keep the next Walter Freeman (advocate and practitioner of pre-frontal lobotomy) from applying dangerous, untested procedures on hundreds of naïve, unsuspecting clients. It's how we might protect children like Candace Newmaker and Rebecca Riley from the unscientific and dangerous psychological practices that killed them.
Because the health and safety of children is at risk, this can't be looked on as an abstract philosophical issue with no consequences. We have a clear choice — we can rebuild clinical psychology to accommodate scientific standards, or we can publicly confess our failure to accomplish this. What we can't do is pretend any more that clinical psychology is based on rigorous science and therefore merits the public's trust.
Quasi-scientific V
I'm trying to convince myself that the conversation I have had with you so far has helped me in understanding this topic and write my short essay. Then I think all it has done is do my head in, make my brain ache and make me wonder just what the hell should I think about the whole thing. But that's probably a good thing.
If you're able to spare me just a bit more of your time, I would greatly appreciate it. I might ask some questions here to which you've already given me the answer. Sorry, but if you could have one more go (perhaps like you were explaining something to a four year old), that be great.
I want to say (in my essay) that Psych aint scientific in it's current practice (& research). I then want to say that without being subjected to the rigor of scientific investigation, a theory / treatment can't really be said to be reliable or efficacious. Therefore the implementation / practice of such theories / treatments is fraught with danger (or, at best, maybe wasting time & resources).
So far, so good. All those positions are consistent with current social standards for evaluating ideas that could help or harm people.
I want to emphasize something I've said before. If a particular practice hasn't been evaluated scientifically, that doesn't mean it's ineffective. It means we don't know.
But I also want to say something about the stuff that science can not evaluate.
That's equally important, because without it, no one will understand why clinical psychology isn't evidence-based. There are some experiments we simply cannot perform without violating basic human rights. Therefore some potentially revealing studies cannot be conducted at all.
You wrote, "Actually, science is the only way to know whether the claims are valid. Saying 'psychoanalysis is more helpful' compares psychoanalysis to CBT for a specific client with a specific condition at a specific time, and it relies on the client's sincerity and accuracy in reporting. It doesn't ask whether something else — or nothing at all — applied over a period of years might have produced the same outcome". Given all these variables and the subjective nature of reporting, could it ever be possible that such theories & treatments are scientifically evaluated / supported?
Certainly, but not using present psychological methods. In the future, directly scanning people's brains with vastly more sophisticated hardware that doesn't use any harmful radiation, and software that can make sense of the data collected, may overcome many of the issues we've been discussing. An example is the use of a superconducting quantum interference device — a "SQUID" — to detect small changes in the hydrogen atoms in our brains, a technology that is now in an early stage of development.
I want to emphasize that this technology is not yet operational, either with regard to detecting brain activity patterns or in interpreting those patterns, and it might be twenty or more years before this approach to evaluating human brain function becomes useful.
And, in case you haven't noticed, that future technology isn't psychology as we understand the term. It essentially abandons psychology altogether and replaces it with something that looks more like computer science and software debugging.
Modern-day psychologists feel comfortable waving their hands in the air and mouthing platitudes about the childhood roots of present behavior, but computer scientists are more pragmatic — they fix the problem by modifying the software. This might be a hint about what will replace psychology.
Because if the answer is no, then we might be missing out on something because we can't answer what we don't know through science.
That is a conceptual trap. If there is something we cannot study using rigorous scientific methods, that is not a reason to pretend we know more than we do, just because the topic is interesting or because someone wants to make money by offering an untested therapy to an uneducated client.
The history of human psychology includes many episodes where the attractiveness of an idea completely blinded its advocates to the fact that it wasn't supported by reliable evidence.
But if it can't be given that scientific support, and instead relies on clinical experience and intuition, can it then not receive the authority and trust that it wants?
No, it cannot. It's not possible to overemphasize this point. Because science exists, and because a failure to apply scientific methods can result in danger (as in the Candace Newmaker story) or a complete waste of time (like Freudian analysis or phrenology), we must be frank about what we don't know and what cannot be tested.
Look at the world around you. Look at all the things that are not science-based, that rely on authority rather than evidence, that trap people in belief systems and attachment to dangerous practices. Look at ideologies based on abstract ideals but that reject common sense, and that therefore cannot possibly work (Communism). Look at the attractive belief systems that end up trapping people their entire lives, but offer nothing in return except the satisfaction of hating people who don't share your beliefs (religion).
When objectively evaluated, present-day clinical psychology is a sort of religious belief that relies on the illusion of scientific validation, and this pattern isn't particularly original — consider "Christian Science" and "Scientology" as other examples of belief systems that rely on a false association with science.
There are some brave people within psychology who would like to push the entire field in the direction of dispassionate scientific validation and completely ignore how people feel about psychology as a belief system. I have already mentioned Ronald Levant, President of the APA, who has risked his position to argue for scientific reform within psychology, and who is experiencing the same kind of resistance religious reformers experience from entrenched believers.
Does that mean that it is destined to exist in a realm that's not dissimilar to religion.
Hmm. I want to emphasize that I didn't read ahead in your message while composing the above paragraphs. Yes, that is exactly what it means — present-day psychology has many of the traits of a religious belief system.
My mum says that she knows God is real. If I was to ask her how she knows, she would say, "I just know in here (puts her hand on her heart)". For something to have authority and trust, I guess it needs that scientific support, otherwise you are saying, "look, this stuff works, I can't prove it beyond a shadow of doubt, but I'm tellin' ya, it works".
It is much worse than that. People willing to exploit strong, unreasoned belief can produce enormous harm. Just read human history, which in the overview can fairly be described as a record of blind obedience to false ideas.
So the whole deal with getting Psychology out of the Philosophical / religion basket and into the world of science was because it wanted that authority.
Yes, but the only way to keep psychology in its present form is to avoid science. Now replace the word "psychology" with any number of other words: Communism/Christianity/Islam/Fascism/name your favorite belief.
This is why science is so controversial, and why people want to pretend an association with it, but without actually understanding or practicing it. People often end up hating science, because:
- The most efficient and accurate way to evaluate reality is to examine the evidence for a proposition without paying attention to how we feel about the evidence, that is, to completely separate thinking from feeling.
- Because evidence is the only issue in a scientific investigation, science is anti-authoritarian, irreverent and subversive.
- A reliance on evidence rather than authority makes science a "bottom-up" system. This coincidentally postures science in opposition to most of modern human history, which consists of fewer and fewer people at the top controlling more and more people at the bottom (a "top-down" system). I emphasize this is a coincidence, it is not by design — science is not itself a political idea, it is a way to study reality.
- Governments initially support science because it promises to generate a lot of political power as a side effect (nuclear weapons, high birth rates caused by medical advances, sophisticated monitoring and control systems). However, once science becomes accepted as a reliable way to study reality, the relationship backfires, and governments begin to fight science, for example the present U.S. administration's effort to keep scientists from speaking out about global warming.
- Science can have an overall democratizing effect on human society, but again, I emphasize this is a coincidence, and it also depends on people being properly educated in science. If uneducated people believe science emanates from scientific authority rather than from evidence, then science can become part of the existing top-down system of control.
Which brings us back to psychology. If clinical psychology doesn't reform itself and adopt scientific methods, it will self-destruct. This is what Ronald Levant (President of the APA) is actually saying in his 2005 paper, but he phrases it much more diplomatically.
Also, even if psychology embraces scientific methods, it will have to change dramatically, because so much of clinical practice isn't based on any kind of scientific evidence.
The primary problem with introducing scientific methods into clinical psychology are those professionals who insist that psychology is perfectly fine the way it is. But this is false — at the moment, without mincing words, clinical psychology is sicker than its sickest patients.
This five-part exchange follows a pattern that's becoming common on this page of reader discussions — it closely resembles Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' "Five Stages of Grief" — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Ironically, the "Five Stages of Grief" is an example of a psychological belief with little evidentiary support that is the topic of conversation. And these conversations support the idea that clinical psychology triggers strong feelings in people, which tells us something important — it's more likely to be a matter of belief than understanding.
You might be right
I want to thank you for an insightful argument against psychology being a science. I wasn't going to leave a comment at first, but I assume that you get more negative replies than positive, so perhaps this will even the score. I admit that, as a Ph.D. student being trained in an organizational psychology, there was a strong emotionally reaction against some of your claims. But logic is well, logical, so there is not really anything to disagree with.
The same problems associated with clinical psychology are readily apparent in organizational studies, with organizational consultants selling a lot of snake oil...much to the detriment of the organization and those who are employed there. Of course, this exploitation works both ways; some managers essentially hire scapegoats to mirror their own belief systems and decisions. Being focused on an academic/research career, I was under the impression that I would be better than that. Actually, most organizational researchers have this opinion; I find it refreshing that it is not true. Evidence-based management is being preached as the savior to these consulting sinners(I chose this metaphor intentionally) by the self-righteous researchers who aren't doing much better.
It is increasingly difficult to understand just how to do better (I know you'll have a witty reply to this such as "become a scientist!). I teach research methods to undergrads pointing to all the potential pitfalls of psychological research and always have fantastic examples...never any good ones. There is always plenty of unethical examples, but even those don't get it right (if you are going to overlook ethics, go all the way..right?)
I now know why we never seem to get anywhere. A lot of teaching parsimony, falsifiability, null hypotheses, and elimination of plausible alternatives...but the actual studies always have something missing (leave that to the discussion section for future researchers to figure out).
Anyhow, just a few thoughts...and thanks for the article to incorporate into my classes (I teach General Psychology, Research Methods, Tests and Measurements, and Statistics). Warm regards.
And thank you for posting your thoughts and experiences.
I suspect that many people in the field go through a gradual reasoning erosion process, more or less like:
- Psychology is a science.
- Okay, it seems psychology isn't rigorous or falsifiable enough to be called a science.
- We're doing the best we can given the practical and ethical constraints.
- Important work awaits the creation of rigorous psychological science.
- The perfect is the enemy of the good.
- Psychology is a science.
Something along those lines. :)
Thanks again for posting.
Unfalsifiable?
I have enjoyed reading your page, and the comments on your Psychology essay.
I don't intend to follow in the footsteps of others who have written to you by trying to undermine your un-falsifiable argument
There are no unfalsifiable arguments in my article.
but there were 3 occurrences that I found to be interesting, firstly, your consistent use of ad hominem slurs,
It happens, but not consistently, and not at odds with the tone of the exchange set by the correspondent. Read my article on the Symmetry Principle to understand why I have the right to respond in kind:
The Symmetry Principle
secondly, your repeated anachronistic appeals to Freud,
As long as there are practitioners of Freudian methods, the appeals aren't anachronistic. There are many such practitioners.
and thirdly, you even cite the very discipline you are trying to undermine.
Of course! The evidence that clinical psychology is not scientific lies within clinical psychology, and it's entirely appropriate to quote from that source. Also, to say that psychology isn't scientific doesn't imply that there are no mental conditions.
Remember the burden of proof is on you, You wrote the essay.
In point of fact, because clinical psychology presents itself as a science, but does not practice science, the burden is on clinical psychology to prove its claims. My article presents copious evidence that clinical psychology is not remotely scientific, and its practitioners increasingly agree that it is not scientific.
You're obviously a very passionate person, and I honestly respect that, we need more passionate people in the world, but you would probably find it more rewarding to learn about psychology than fearing it.
I understand psychology very well, and the burden is on you to support the idea that I "fear" it.
You do understand, don't you, that the President of the American
Psychological Association has recently accepted my position on this topic and has begun exhorting his members to adopt evidence-based methods:
Evidence-based practice in psychology (APA, 2005)
I don't how such anger toward the discipline of psychology evolved but I hope it doesn't last long, for your sake.
What anger would that be? Where is your evidence?
In your message you claim that I possess both fear and anger toward clinical psychology, but you produce no evidence for either of these claims. Meanwhile, you dismiss out of hand the entire corpus of evidence that I present for my thesis.
This is a classic response to my article, and examples abound. In essence, I possess fear and anger toward psychology, but the evidence I present is somehow overlooked. It's clear why this correspondent is such a fan of psychology — he processes reality solely in emotional terms, science and evidence play no part in his thinking.
What can be done?
So in the absence of psychology, what can one do to deal with mental problems.
How did we get here, across millions of years of evolution? How did
people manage before the so-far-unfulfilled promise of psychology made its appearance? We coped. In fact, all appearances to the contrary, we're still coping.
Is there anything that is scientific in this area.
If by "scientific" you mean therapeutic methods backed up by falsifiable scientific research, then no, there isn't.
What can be done.
In essence, you are asking what is available to replace something that
didn't exist in the first place. That's pretty close to meaningless.
In my opinion, eventually something meaningful will replace clinical psychology, in the same way that oncology replaced the village witch doctor. Future students will read that people once sat down and tried to talk their way out of serious mental disturbances — and they will laugh, just as we now laugh at the witch doctor approach to treating cancer.
The president of the American Psychological Association has recently taken the first step by calling for the adoption of evidence-based treatment methods, unfortunately to loud protests from the members of his own organization.
Scientific Laws I
I found your essay "A Society of Victims" roughly a month ago when I made a search on the word "victimization" due to a personal issue. I am now thinking of putting up my own site (albeit a Christian site)
"Albeit?" — no need to apologize, especially when you could be using that time and energy to read and learn.
and in it, I'd like to put links to "interesting articles" (not necessarily related to religion — at least, not directly) that I have encountered, and may encounter in the future. I then reviewed your article, then went on to look further into the Psychology section of your site, and I saw a statement in your response to one of the feedbacks to your "Is Psychology a Science?" article ("Your Limited Understanding II") which I thought I'd express my reaction to:
"Science is not about truth, and a scientific theory is never proven true. Scientific theories can only ever be proven false."
First off, if "science is not about truth", what then of "scientific laws"?
The answer is simple — there are no "scientific laws." Everything in science is a theory, nothing is a law. It is the business of science to question and to doubt, and once an idea becomes so well-established as to be beyond doubt, at that moment it leaves the domain of science. This philosophy signals a respect for open inquiry and the imperfection of human knowledge.
Like, "Newton's Laws of Motion" for example.
Expressions like "Laws of motion" seen in popular writing are a way to get around the ignorance and confusion of people not trained in science. It's too cumbersome to say "theories about which we are quite sure ... of motion." Scientists understand this kind of rhetoric, but I still object to it, for a reason discussed below.
I mean, those aren't regarded as "theories", they are already considered "laws".
Once ideas are looked on as laws, they can no longer be challenged or improved, and thus aren't part of science any more. It is as simple as that. If there really were "scientific laws," Einstein would have been prevented from replacing Newton's "laws" with his own (more comprehensive) theories.
In other words, Newton's "laws" weren't laws at all, they were approximations. By the way, the same is true of Einstein's "laws," for those compelled to think in terms of laws.
The term "law" implies the existence of an authority that dictates what we may think. The term "theory" invites input from anyone with a better explanation or new evidence. The first of these honors authority, the second respects reason and ingenuity.
At some point, they were "proven" to be "true" — and accepted as such ("truth").
There are no proofs of truth in science (although there can be proofs of falsity). There are only theories. This is a common confusion, and it is exploited by the "Intelligent Design" people, who try to say that a theory is just a hunch. Ironically, for the religious, absolute truths exist for which there is no evidence at all.
Am I missing something here?
Yes — a science education. As it turns out, you are in the majority among Americans, most of whom have no idea what science is.
Secondly, are you, as a scientist, actually conceding to the idea that what we call "science" is limited only to what human faculties and means can observe, test, and comprehend?
In reply, let me ask you — what else is there? If a religious leader assured you that the theory of gravity is just a hunch, would you jump off a building? Or would you rely on your reason and perceptions to come to a different conclusion?
Also, I want to clarify what "human faculties and means" can encompass in science. Sometimes a product of pure reason is so beautiful that it must be true about nature, like Einstein's relativity equations, an example where experimental confirmation was almost an afterthought.
Another example is Paul Dirac's prediction of antimatter. Dirac realized his equation allowed two solutions with differing signs, and to rewrite the equation without this property would produce something so ugly that it didn't deserve to be true. So instead Dirac left the equation in its aesthetically pleasing form and predicted two kinds of matter (with differing signs, as though nature was described by mathematics). Again, experimental confirmation was almost an afterthought.
In the same article, you presented a hypothetical conversation between a psychic wannabe and a scientist, in which the scientist offered "chance" as an alternative explanation for the psychic wannabe's streak of correct guesses.
Although in the article I describe it as an "alternative explanation," I mean this ironically. In the real world, a psychic explanation is the alternative, after the abandonment of reason.
Now, judging from how you've spoken of religion, I've assumed that you're an atheist.
I'm not an atheist. Atheism is an "ism" — a doctrine, a belief. I try to avoid beliefs, instead I reason using evidence. (Obviously I believe some things, but I recognize this as a weakness arising from mental laziness, not something to be proud of.)
Atheism is a label that religious people apply to those without religious beliefs, on the presumption that everything is a belief (to a hammer, everything looks like a nail). This way of thinking is so pervasive that religious people sometimes ask me which God I don't believe in, just to simplify the process of brainless categorization.
Please feel free to correct me, if necessary. In any case, what everyone can really agree on is that life as we know it exists solely on the only planet in our solar system which is capable of sustaining it — and a complex diversity at that.
This statement is flawed in several ways:
- Saying "everyone can really agree on" is called an "argumentum ad populum," an argument that depends only on the popularity of a belief, not on evidence. This is a classic logical error. The fact that everyone believes something doesn't make it true, and the fact that no one believes something doesn't make it false.
- Saying "life as we know it exists solely on the only planet in our solar system which is capable of sustaining it" is a tortured phrase that assumes what it should be proving — it's fatally self-referential.
- Describing life on Earth as a "complex diversity" makes a statement that isn't compared to anything, as though it could stand on its own.
In point of fact, we haven't even begun to explore our solar system in any depth, and we may well discover life on other planets or star systems, in unexpected forms, so it's too soon to be making grand pronouncements about where life is and isn't.
At the time of writing, 306 planets have been detected around other stars, most of them rather large, and there are likely to be many more smaller, Earth-like planets, below our present detection sensitivity, any one of which might support life. Conclusion? It's too soon to be claiming we are the only planet that supports life.
Do you see what I am saying? Your statement is a series of unwarranted assumptions. Scientists don't assume things without evidence.
Not only that, us humans [sic] are the only form of life here on Earth capable of things that are beyond those of "natural functions" (for lack of a better way of stating it).
Where's the evidence for this proposition? There are many kinds of creatures able to reason, that have self-awareness (easily proven using the classic "mirror test," where a creature recognizes itself in a mirror), that use tools, that use complex communication methods we haven't begun to understand (dolphins and whales).
Also, I think it's narcissistic to claim that our lives rise above "natural functions." Look around you. Read a newspaper. Observe how likely it is that one group will try to kill everyone who doesn't share their (usually religious) beliefs. Animals kill because they are hungry. Humans kill because we are stupid. And we look down on animals.
Would you say these are all also due to mere "chance"?
Do you know the principle called "Occam's Razor?" It says that, among competing theories, the simplest one is likely to be correct. Chance is a simple explanation and has much supporting evidence.
Also, what is "mere" about chance? You are implying that chance is a weak explanation. If chance were in competition with other explanations, each supported by evidence, that might make sense. But in the example you quote, there is no evidence for alternatives.
Scientific Laws II
[ prior quotes in italics ]
The answer is simple — there are no "scientific laws." Everything in science is a theory, nothing is a law. It is the business of science to question and to doubt, and once an idea becomes so well-established as to be beyond doubt, at that moment it leaves the domain of science.
After it leaves the domain of science, where does it go?
Into that drab, open-air idea mall meant for people who adopt ideas without reflection. People for whom simple truths are indistinguishable from simple falsehoods.
Expressions like "Laws of motion" seen in popular writing are a way to get around the ignorance and confusion of people not trained in science. It's too cumbersome to say "theories about which we are quite sure ... of motion." Scientists understand this kind of rhetoric, but I still object to it, for a reason discussed below.
Got it. But when you say, "quite sure", does that mean "100% sure"? Or is there any room for doubt left?
Yes, of course. Were this not the case, we would still live in the Dark Ages of absolute religious certainty. The choice comes down to one between perpetual doubt and intellectual fascism — where you either believe or die.
The term "law" implies the existence of an authority that dictates what we may think. The term "theory" invites input from anyone with a better explanation or new evidence. The first of these honors authority, the second respects reason and ingenuity.
So basically, no scientific theory, whether regarded as "law" or otherwise, is absolute?
That's correct, and I see where you're going with this. You cannot argue, based on the presence of doubt, that an absolute belief, accompanied by no evidence, represents an improvement. Unless, of course, you think being certain stands above being accurate.
There are no proofs of truth in science (although there can be proofs of falsity). There are only theories. This is a common confusion, and it is exploited by the "Intelligent Design" people, who try to say that a theory is just a hunch.
Okay. What "proof" "falsifies" Biblical teaching in particular?
Biblical teaching doesn't have to be falsified — there's no evidence for it, so it doesn't stand as a theory meriting the attention of educated people. You are trying to shift a burden of proof that properly belongs to the advocates for a belief, onto those who patiently await any kind of evidence.
Ironically, for the religious, absolute truths exist for which there is no evidence at all.
I can't speak for other religions, but for one, there are those who see (including myself) that prophecies in the Bible correspond to present-day events.
There is no evidence for this position, and you have just made my point for me. "Wars and rumors of wars" is not a prophecy, it is a statement about all of human history.
I know it's not the most intellectual thing to say, but is there anything that should convince me otherwise?
There isn't anything like that, because you are a believer. Believers speak when they should be listening. They assert when they should be investigating. For example, below you challenge my statement that the majority of Americans don't understand science, when instead you could have spent ten seconds doing a Web search to verify my remark.
As it turns out, you are in the majority among Americans, most of whom have no idea what science is.
(I'm tempted to ask you for evidence regarding "MAJORITY among Americans, MOST of whom have no idea what science is".)
Don't ask for evidence, seek it out. You obviously have a computer, and I just spent 10 seconds uncovering the evidence. Example:
Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding (National Science Foundation)
A quote:
"Although Americans express strong support for science and technology (S&T), most are not very well informed about these subjects. The public's lack of knowledge about basic scientific facts and the scientific process can have far-reaching implications."
This is just one of dozens of Internet articles that make the same point, many accompanied by depressing statistics.
Has science done mankind more good than harm anyway?
Are we having this conversation (in both a technical and political sense)? Did your children die of polio? Will you be likely to live beyond the age of 30 years (the average pre-science lifetime)? Will you be burned at the stake for voicing an idea religion rejects? No? These are all results of the scientific, rational outlook.
To live in modern times and ask what science has accomplished is to imitate an ostrich.
In reply, let me ask you — what else is there? If a religious leader assured you that the theory of gravity is just a hunch, would you jump off a building? Or would you rely on your reason and perceptions to come to a different conclusion?
At this point, I don't deviate from what is in the Bible.
Who cares? The Bible was composed by men for any number of reasons. Absorbing the Bible as the direct word of God is like having sex with a series of strangers, believing that each of them is pure as the driven snow.
Too many bogus religions out there.
They're all bogus. That's their common thread. If they weren't bogus, they wouldn't have to kill unbelievers, instead they could persuade using reason.
I'd like to note however that the Christ, Jesus, for one, led by example. What has He asked of His followers (and those who wish to follow Him) that He hasn't done Himself?
How about kill millions of unbelievers? He didn't do that, and he would be horrified to see what his followers have done in his name.
Although in the article I describe it as an "alternative explanation," I mean this ironically. In the real world, a psychic explanation is the alternative, after the abandonment of reason.
But isn't that because of the bias against occurences that hasn't been properly quantified by scientific standards?
What bias is that? ESP researcher J. B. Rhine systematically (and unscientifically) discarded experimental runs that he believed were maliciously created by subjects who were against the idea of ESP. When these runs are restored, the statistical evidence Rhine claimed for ESP evaporates.
Use common sense. If ESP existed, a psychic investor could use it to sense what a corporation was planning to do tomorrow, and make a killing in equities. Billions of dollars are at stake, but no one seems to be able to tap into ESP to reap this profit. The reason is obvious.
In this case, what is regarded as paranormal. Like, before, when people generally thought that the Earth is flat, the Earth being spherical in shape was the "alternative". Then someone was able to convince everyone otherwise.
The flat earth is not a "paranormal" idea. You are misusing the term. And a spherical earth is not a case of an advocate on a soapbox convincing everyone of something they couldn't figure out for themselves.
Your prose tells me that for you, the world of ideas comes down to which absolute authority to uncritically accept. True Believers listen to the experts. Scientists listen to nature.
I'm not an atheist. Atheism is an "ism" — a doctrine, a belief. I try to avoid beliefs, instead I reason using evidence. (Obviously I believe some things, but I recognize this as a weakness arising from mental laziness, not something to be proud of.)
How about "scientist"?
Different etymology. There is no "scientism" — except possibly Christian Science or Scientology. In any case, science rejects belief in favor of evidence. And science itself is not a belief system, it is a tool for sorting out reality.
It's not too different from some "theories" being called "laws".
No, that is very different. Those terms mean opposite things.
Not that I advocate labelling and over-simplification. It isn't just the "religious" that uses that label, some people who attempt to refute the existence of God usually through logic and science (or lack thereof) identify themselves as "atheists".
That term shows a degree of intellectual cowardice — but it's more likely that "atheists" are labeled by their opponents.
This statement is flawed in several ways:
1. Saying "everyone can really agree on" is called an "argumentum ad populum," an argument that depends only on the popularity of a belief, not on evidence. This is a classic logical error. The fact that everyone believes something doesn't make it true, and the fact that no one believes something doesn't make it false.
I wasn't trying to justify that argument based on popularity of belief.
There is no other reason for you to have put it that way. Your way of arguing is common among those who think what most people believe is, ipso facto, correct. You know — religious believers.
What I actually meant by it is that these are things which no human has evidence to falsify.
Hold on. A proposition is not true until it's proven false, it is false until there is evidence for it. Your view is the default intellectual posture of the True Believer (that something is true until proven false, preferably by someone else).
And so far, we (humans) are only arguing amongst ourselves.
Except scientists, who examine the evidence provided by nature.
2. Saying "life as we know it exists solely on the only planet in our solar system which is capable of sustaining it" is a tortured phrase that assumes what it should be proving — it's fatally self-referential.
Is it false though?
It's neither true nor false. It isn't constructed well enough to be evaluated in those terms.
What I'm trying to say is that people are capable of doing things that are beyond what is natural (or necessary).
There is nothing we do that is "unnatural" — nothing. That's because we're part of nature.
Like practically everything in popular culture.
How does popular culture transcend the natural world? How transcendental is rap music?
Look around you. Read a newspaper. Observe how likely it is that one group will try to kill everyone who doesn't share their (usually religious) beliefs. Animals kill because they are hungry. Humans kill because we are stupid. And we look down on animals.
But then, we have people like Gandhi...
I'm not sure we have the collective right to associate ourselves with Gandhi.
Isn't calling people "stupid" based on the likelihood of a collective action that is perceived to be counter-productive kind of like that "argumentum ad populum" in principle?
No, it's simple statistics. Statistically speaking, people are incredibly stupid. It isn't an ad populum argument based on what most people believe, it's simply based on what most people do with their lives.
Do you know the principle called "Occam's Razor?" It says that, among competing theories, the simplest one is likely to be correct. Chance is a simple explanation and has much supporting evidence.
But having the highest probability isn't 100% certainty.
What's your point? Are you making the religious argument that, because science isn't 100% certain, we should instead wallow in superstition?
I guess we have some kind of a waiting game on our hands.
You mean, for the Second Coming? Even granted the premise that Christ might come back, now that we've turned Christianity into one of the worst disasters ever to befall humankind, he's likely changed his mind.
Status of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
Interesting article but in ref to this statement "Cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy are the psychotherapeutic approaches that have the best documented efficacy in the literature for the specific treatment of major depressive disorder, although rigorous studies evaluating the efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy have not been published" I was under the impression psychodynamic psychotherapy is based on Freudian theory; cognitive behaviour therapy is not psychodynamic in nature therefore the last part iof the statement doesn't refer to CBT
No, actually, the phrase, located here --
APA Practice Guidelines/Choice of specific psychotherapy
— is clearly meant to refer to CBT. The author of this article may not have understood the historical meaning of "psychodynamic", and it seems the meaning has changed over time. In any case, CBT has not been subjected to a rigorous scientific evaluation.
Under "psychodyamic" in Wikipedia, we find —
Psychodynamic (Wikipedia)
— with copious references to current practice including CBT, using the same term.
I Was Amused
I was amused by you discussion, "Psychology 101" I believe it was called.
If you were amused, you cannot have been reading very carefully or deeply.
I think much of your position is correct if you are denoting speculative psychology.
Until psychology is reformed and adopts scientific standards, it is all "speculative psychology". There just isn't a tradition of throwing out unscientific beliefs, practices and treatments, and this is essential for psychology to be looked on as a science.
There is also no unifying theoretical framework to connect psychological theory and practice, a requirement for a scientific field as explained in this article:
What Is Science?
What is more, I agree that much of how psychology has been applied is not well founded. However I wonder if you have considered the development of experimental psychology and its impact on recent thought.
Until the experiments lead to the potential falsification and abandonment of core psychological theories, experimental psychology won't confer the status of a science onto traditional psychology. There is no evidence for this yet.
Take for example the study of quantitative psychology. At the University of Washington students enrolled in this program concentrate on mathematical, statistical, and computational studies that relate to psychological research.
This is an example where scientific methods exist at the periphery of psychology, but it is vital to understand that, unless and until psychology itself is reformed to adopt scientific methods and test its own theories, this peripheral effect has no meaning. It would be like conducting a serious, well-designed study in astrology. Such a study cannot change the scientific status of astrology unless and until it tests and potentially falsifies the beliefs that lie at the heart of astrology. This is exactly the problem facing psychology — lots of science taking place, but with no effect on the scientific status of psychology itself.
Another example is the Neuroscience field where neuroanatomy, chemistry, and neurophysiology and advanced mathematics are used to study brain functions and how they relate to behavioral processes.
This is completely removed from the subject matter of psychology. Psychology cannot borrow a scientific status from mainstream medical fields like this.
These are only a couple of many examples of how psychology has advanced to take (I think) its rightful place among other fields of science.
You haven't provided any examples yet. If a scientist conducts research but without testing the core theories of psychology, this cannot change the status of psychology as a field. If a neuranatomist studies the physical structure of the brain, this cannot change the status of psychology because it doesn't address the basic theories of psychology, which are not remotely connected to theories about neuroanatomy.
While classical physics and chemistry were once considered "hard" sciences, we now know that what is really "hard" to understand is human behavior and the workings of the brain.
You have just used the word "hard" in two differently and mutually incompatible ways. In the first use of the word, you mean "rigorous and disciplined." In the second, you mean "difficult and confusing." In reality, "rigorous" may be "difficult" but it is certainly not "confusing."
By studying quantitative psychology, neuroscience, genetics, evolutionary science and a host of other highly technical fields in a logical way and with scientific discipline the literature in the field of psychology advances and understanding grows.
You have just tried to ally psychology, a non-science, with some fields that are sciences. Science is not a pheromone that can rub off one field onto another by chance contact.
I believe that there are many, yet perhaps not enough, psychologists that ARE very concerned with not only using scientific methods and principles of reasoning and sound argument.
Those who are concerned with science, and who understand science, tend to leave the field of psychology. Those who were always attuned to the requirements of science from the time they were students, would never have entered the field in the first place.
It is one thing to say "there are psychologists who are concerned about the status of their field." It is quite another to say "Recovered Memory Therapy cannot be practiced because its claims have not been verified in a rigorous double-blind study." Until the second happens, I'm really not impressed with the first. Did I mention that Recovered Memory Therapy is still widely practiced, years after the last court of law threw out its claims and freed its victims?
Critical Thinking I
I stumbled across your page while doing research for a critical thinking class. Your arguments against psychology and religion are of the best that I can find. I continually check your website for new debates and articles. I find it disturbing how many people refuse to criticize their views and consider the bigger picture. Anyway, I appreciate your valiant attempt to open closed minds.
Thank you! What I've noticed about those psychologists who have chosen to argue here about the scientific status of psychology is that their positions are indistinguishable from those of the religious True Believer — they rely on emotion rather than evidence.
Of course, the psychologists who've written me aren't representative of the profession as a whole. I think the majority wouldn't bother to dispute the present status of psychology, preferring instead to work in large and small ways to change the situation. An example is American Psychological Association President Ronald Levant, who against substantial internal resistance is advocating an evidence-based model instead of the present unscientific system for choosing and evaluating treatments.
Thanks again for writing.
Critical Thinking II
It's astonishing how people will believe in something regardless of the evidence against it.
It's so common that I think it must have survival value as an adaptation trait. It's sort of like believing in the benevolence of government against all contrary evidence. This is not to say governments aren't sometimes benevolent, but to accept such a thing without evidence can be dangerous.
One might ask, if blind faith has survival value, how can it ever be dangerous? The answer is that a modern government (or a modern religion) has a size and power that couldn't have existed when our instincts were being formed through natural selection. It's one thing to blindly follow a leader who has a bigger stick. It's quite another if he has a cave full of nuclear weapons.
The overly diagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder is my biggest problem with psychology. Children who do not want to do their homework have a disorder and need medication.
This common practice supports the central myths of modern child psychology:
- Children should turn out like their parents.
- Clinical psychology can make this happen.
Neither of these claims is true. If children were supposed to turn out like their parents, this would contradict evolution and childbearing wouldn't exist (because nature doesn't waste anything). And if clinical psychology could make it happen, there would be some evidence (there isn't any).
I was diagnosed with ADD at an early age and seemed to be cured in 9th or 10th grade, with no medication or therapy. My ADD turned out to be boredom and lack of motivation.
Boredom and lack of motivation are rational responses to a common, stultifying childhood experience that doesn't reinforce the outlook or goals of parents, consequently it doesn't appear in the DSM.
By the way, have you come across post-traumatic slavery syndrome?
I just read up on it. It's very likely a craven exploitation of racism (the latter is real enough) and supports the practice of turning everything into a psychological diagnosis.
Its a new disorder that is making its was into the DSM.
Of course!
Apparently, slave anxiety is something that can be passed from generation to generation.
It's a perfect malady for modern clinical psychology — it panders to white guilt over past and present mistreatment of black people, it's a condition without an objective diagnosis, it requires perpetual treatments, and there are no criteria to identify a cure. And it sells lots of books.
I can't wait to see the symptoms that describe this one.
A pronounced tendency to wander into a bookstore, browse, and come out a believer? An unwillingness to ridicule the idea for fear of being branded a racist? In case you think the latter fear isn't realistic, once I gave a talk about overpopulation and a member of the audience tried to dismiss me as "anti-child."
You may have already answered this in "On Believing", but how does one argue against the mover unmoved theory? This is the only point I have trouble with when arguing with religious people.
I was initially going to say I'm not interested in the speculations of someone who believed women to be inferior because they have fewer teeth (e.g. Aristotle, false, and false). But that would be arguing against the source rather than the evidence, a common logical error.
Aristotle's "mover unmoved" idea argues that all motion must have an origin, something later called the "primum mobile" (prime mover). Later writers took this unresolvable question as proof of God.
There are three problems with this class of question. The first is there are innate limitations to every logical system, questions that can't be meaningfully answered within that system (this follows from Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems).
Second, arguing this way about a "primum mobile" is like arguing that stationary objects are stationary because they were brought to rest by a "primum stationarius," perhaps a slothful deity (the false hidden assumption is that motion is unnatural and requires a source, but being stationary is natural and requires no source). But all such questions fail by self-reference, and because they cannot be meaningfully answered, they become a playground for philosophers, people who prefer speaking and writing to thinking.
The third problem is that it poses an unanswerable question, discovers there is no easy answer, then leaps to the conclusion that it represents proof of God. But anything can be used to "prove" God, in part because disproof is impossible.
The "primum mobile" question is like the most commonly heard of Zeno's Paradoxes, the idea that you can never get from A to B, because first you must cover half the distance, then you must cover half the remaining distance, ad infinitum. But Zeno's Paradox doesn't prevent one from traveling from A to B, it only comes up in thinking about traveling from A to B, and if the ancients understood the mathematical concept of a limit, the problem would have been seen as trivial:
While actually traveling along Zeno's path from A to B, each new step requires half the time of the prior step, so the paradox changes nothing. But while thinking about the trip, each new step requires the same amount of time, consequently the mental trip never ends. This means Zeno's Paradox isn't a paradox of travel, it's only a paradox of thought, and a similar analysis applies to "primum mobile".
Psychology as a Career
I enjoyed reading your articles about psychology, even though they may have turned my world upside down. (In fact, perhaps that's why I enjoyed them!)
In that case, I'm glad you happened upon my site.
I'm currently a computer programmer who has decided to change careers and become a clinical psychologist (and in fact just starting to go back to undergraduate school for it).
Wow — computer science must be in worse shape than I thought for this career change to seem attractive. Computer science has been rather nice to me, but I guess I should be aware of changing times.
Now, after reading some of the things you've written I have some pretty strong doubts about doing this. I'm not sure I'd like to be involved in years of study with something that isn't a science.
Clinical psychology isn't just unscientific, it is infested with a number of outright frauds and cheats, people who prey on the naïve and weak-minded. This shouldn't be taken as a blanket condemnation of all clinical psychologists — to paraphrase a Henry Kissinger remark about politicians, 90% of clinical psychologists give the other 10% a bad name.
To make a realistic assessment of clinical psychology, it may help to read the ridiculous defenses of the field posted to my message boards by practicing psychologists [including some on this page].
My question to you is: What would you offer as general advice to psychology students who have realized this? For example, do you think they should enter the field anyway but try to improve it from within?
There is a lot of inertia within clinical psychology, forces that will try to keep it going in the same direction with the same momentum. American Psychological Association President Ronald Levant has recently begun advocating a change to evidence-based practice, but it must be emphasized that this is a proposal, not a reality, and Levant is encountering much resistance from within his own ranks.
Basically, if psychology were scientific, theoretical psychologists could tell clinical psychologists which practices aren't effective, and they could stop any practices not supported by scientific research — this is how mainstream medicine works to assure public safety. But this simply isn't true about psychology, and it won't become true any time soon. Clinical psychologists can do virtually anything to their clients without a realistic expectation of censure.
As to leadership within the field, consider the example of Harvard psychology professor John Mack's decision to accept the accounts of "alien abductees" at face value. The hidden message of this example is that, when scientific standards are abandoned, anything goes.
It seems a bit hopeless when I think about it: the ethical problems we encounter with testing along with the difficulties in falsifiability make psychology's steps toward becoming a science very difficult.
Mainstream medicine did it, after throwing out the trash and starting over between about 1890 and 1935. This process hasn't even begun in psychology, but there is increasing pressure from many quarters that recognize current psychological practice for what it is.
Thanks very much for your great articles!
You are welcome. With all its defects, at least computer science deals with reality.
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