[beloch]

If you go to most universities, psychology is a part of the faculty of Humanities, not science. There's a reason for that.

To call a discipline a science, it needs to use the scientific method, not just sometimes, but always. It needs testable hypotheses. Psychology sometimes has this, but often it does not. There is certainly reason for non-science fields to use scientific methods at times, but that doesn't necessarily mean those fields should be called sciences.

An illustrative example is the difference between "medicine" and "medical science". Your doctor has studied medicine. He or she, in addition to studying some medical science, has learned interview techniques, psychology, and various other aspects of a craft that are, in no way, scientific. If you talk to a doctor in a non-medical setting (many are specifically trained not to reveal ignorance to patients in order to maintain patient confidence), you'll find they're remarkably ignorant about the how's or why's of the human body, except when it comes to something they've been trained to spot and fix. A huge portion of their training centers on knowing when to do nothing at all, because medical intervention almost always carries it's own risks. In his or her daily job, your doctor does not employ the scientific method. At least, you should probably hope you are not being experimented on by your family physician! Some doctors do research in the field of "medical science", but this really is an entirely different job from being a family physician, surgeon, etc.. Medicine is a highly skilled craft that sometimes uses science, but it is not itself a science.

[James001]

Actually psychology is a part of the sciences in most universities, atleast in Canada. There's a reason for that too, I'm sure.

Also, your assertion that to call a discipline a science, it needs to use the scientific method, is well... demonstrably false, simply by virtue of the fact that we are having this debate.

The scientific method produces very reliable knowledge, but it is not the only way to produce knowledge that is reliable. There is also knowledge that we rely on that is not as rock solid as knowledge obtained from the scientific method, but which is still valuable and still falls under the realm of science, because it is still part of the systematic pursuit of progressively more reliable knowledge.

[tagrun]

> but it is not the only way to produce knowledge that is reliable.

Yeah, as evidenced by

http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f...

Indeed! Just look at the puny and half-wrong progress made in physics and compare it to the enormous progress made in astrology and psychology which transformed our lives and understanding of everything!

I mean, they've been at it for hundreds of years, and they still haven't realized that "it is not the only way to produce knowledge that is reliable" (never mind what "reliable" means, who cares about such details anyway). Wish they were also blessed with magic ball.

And hey! They've been sucking our tax money like vampires for so many years!

[James001]

The replication crisis isn't only within the soft sciences, but nice try.

According to a 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists, 70% of them failed to reproduce another scientist's experiments (50% failed to reproduce their own experiment). These numbers differ among disciplines:

chemistry: 90% (60%), biology: 80% (60%), physics and engineering: 70% (50%), medicine: 70% (60%), Earth and environment science: 60% (40%).

But it's just the social sciences right? Thank god we have the scientific method! Otherwise we'd be lost! Heaven forbid

[tagrun]

Let me guess, you got those "scientific" results from the Scientific Journal of Social Academics, using that "other method that reproduces reliable knowledge", so this must be correct! And it can't have anything to do with the pressure they're feeling now that someone is looking at their work with some scrutiny, because they've been the gate keepers of "reliable knowledge" all along.

And I'm pretty sure those 1500 scientists represent the scientist all over the world from all countries and fields, and those studies must be from the shady physics journals such as Nature and Phys Rev series and not crap journals no real physicist even read. If only they could be like the major psychology journals http://www.nature.com/news/replication-studies-bad-copy-1.10...

You were funny when you tried to justify how scientific psychology was, by using+not using scientific method at will. You sound downright idiotic the moment you tried to imply that physics is a sham (which used to be the de facto science long before any of your "sciences" even appeared).

Anyway, go play with yourself. I've got better things to do. Like actual science. Rumble all you want. I'm done with you.

[vacri]

Being a sore loser doesn't make for robust science, nor does snide ad-hominems.

[James001]

I'm sorry if I've angered you by showing you that the scientific method doesn't produce perfect science, just like the methods of science that psychology use doesn't produce perfect science either. I'm not rumbling, just giving words of advice that hopefully you'll heed if you actually want to be a scientist and not just a naive lab rat. To each their own though, you just perfectly demonstrated the arrogant attitude that is ruining science today. Why read OP's article when we have you as all the proof we need?

[patall]

There is a fundamental difference between "half the studies are wrong" and "half of the people have encountered false results (at anytime in their life)". I agree that even "hard" sciences often claim dubious results but a psychology study with 20 (or often even less) participants from a not even remotely representative background that study a plethora of social behaviors is indeed a whole different level of unscientific.