[SubiculumCode]

I agree (as a psychologist/neuroscientist) that psychology has problems with reproducibility, but I think you pick the incorrect issues (bias and ideology) nor is it that we are bad or dishonest scientists. Rather, I believe it is the aggregating factors of 1)system complexity, and 2)non-uniform samples (subject's differing in unexpected/unknown ways between samples), and 3) weak theoretical knowledge

Another post here made the point that it is necessary to guide empiricism with strong theoretical frameworks. Those strong theoretical frameworks are missing in psychology/neuroscience, because it is a very very new field tacking something very very complicated. We have weak theories, and thus empirical findings may fail to replicate for differences we do not measure (season? time of day? menstruation? obesity? coffee? as examples of things that might not be measured, or is not practical to include into statistical models due to df) and so on. But this is not to say that there has not been progress. There has been lots of progress, and theories are becoming better, ever so slowly. but we build on converging methods spanning basic neuroscience of individual neurons or local networks to MRI studies of macro phenomenology.

In the end, I think of myself more as a cartographer or explorer, much like those that set sail across the sea knowing little about what will be found, BUT DOCUMENTING IT in their naval logs and reports, so that one day those observations can be put together and build the world map. That is why open neuroscience is critical to our field.

[sidlls]

" but I think you pick the incorrect issues (bias and ideology) nor is it that we are bad or dishonest scientists."

Of course there's no dishonesty. And to be bad would require what you do to be science in the first place. From my perspective (physicist), "science" is applied too broadly. What you do isn't useless or unimportant. I just struggle to square it with "science" in any meaningful sense. That's probably not a popular opinion, but whatever: I stand by it.

[SubiculumCode]

What makes physics a science and psychology not? Are our brains made of the same matter as the rest of the universe? Surely so. Is it because psychology seeks to describe/predict aggregated phenomena? This is a non-starter. Take for example the derivation of Boyle's law, pv = k, for pressure. Surely this derivation was the result of real scientific inquiry, despite that equation merely describing the aggregate of underspecified and innumerable interactions? Is it instead because brains are too complex for scientific inquiry? I quite understand that, despite the immense technical prowess of physicists and engineers, the problems they seek to elucidate are all said and done, easy. Easy because the complexity is low, easy because the problem space is limited, easy because you can see and control more of the entire picture. Is psychology not a science because its problems are just too hard for physicists to tackle? Or to tackle in way they'd prefer: easy, controlled, identifiable, enumerated??? Is it because you can never *actually* rerun a psychology experiment because people are always different always changing? Well, please refer to the experiments deriving Boyle's law. Each experiment was not an exact replica of the previous, because the innumerable collisions/interactions of molecules will never take the same path through time, no matter how hard we try, because, well hell, quantum physics, or so I am told. Buy Boyle did derive some useful relationships, despite the heterogeneity of subjects/runs, and so has psychology.

[SantalBlush]

How are you defining "science"? That would help us understand how it's applied too broadly.