[yoshuaw]

It's hard to tell honestly. I studied psychology for two years in uni, and I dropped out rather disillusioned about the field. Some of my least favorite aspects included:

  - Acknowledgement by our professors that P-hacking (pruning datasets to get the desired results) was not just common, but rampant

  - One of our classes being thrown in limbo for several months after we found out that a bunch of foundational research underpinning it was entirely made up (See: Diederik Stapel).

  - Experiencing first-hand just how unreproducible most research in our faculty was (SPSS was the norm, R was the exception, Python was unused).

  - Learning that most psychology research is conducted on white psychology students in their early/mid-twenties in the EU and US. But the findings are broadly generalized across populations and cultures.

  - Learning that the DSM-IV classified homosexuality as a mental disorder. Though the DSM-V has since dropped this. 

The DSM-V is still incredibly hostile towards trans people through a game of internal power politics and cherry-picked research. It's really bad honestly.

Though I do generally hold psychologists in high regard (therapy is good), I'm not particularly impressed by psychology as a science. And in turn don't necessarily trust the DSM all that much.

[fsiefken]

> Experiencing first-hand just how unreproducible most research in our faculty was (SPSS was the norm, R was the exception, Python was unused).

How did you experience this? Did you fail to reproduce the same results when doing the research again while using R? This is how I interpret your statement, but I think it's not what you mean.

If SPSS was the norm, R or SciPy shouldn't have made a difference in reproducibility as the statistics should be more or less the same. I did social science with SPSS fine; T-Tests, MANOVA, Cronbach's alpha, Kruskall-Wallis, it's all in there. It seems you suggest that using SPSS inherently makes for bad and irreproducible science, it's similar to saying using Word instead of an open source package like LaTeX makes research unreproducible even if the data, methodology and statistics are openly accessible. This is not the case. What i mean is that while I agree there can be friction between using Word and SPSS and Open Science and FAIR principles because of the proprietary formats, this isn't inherently a problem as people can use the dataset (csv or sqlite) and do the mentioned statistical tests outlined in the published pdf (or even an imported docx) in any statistical language.

https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/

For anyone looking for an easy to use alternative to R, Jamovi is a capable and easy to use open source alternative to SPSS and RStudio. https://medium.com/@Frank.M.LoSchiavo/jamovi-a-free-alternat...

[dluan]

obviously p-hacking wouldnt be as prevalent if we just re-wrote DSM in rust

[KPGv2]

there'd be way too many personality traits included tho

[aeve890]

>One of our classes being thrown in limbo for several months after we found out that a bunch of foundational research underpinning it was entirely made up (See: Diederik Stapel).

That's mild. In one of Chile's largest and most prestigious universities, Jodorowsky "psychomagic" is teached as a real therapeutic approach.

[JBits]

At least you're working with Rust now.

As someone with zero knowledge of psychology, I'm biased against it. Partly because of my vague impression that psychology tries to fit people to models, rather than viewing models as limited approximations.

For a while I've thought it would be nice to know what results the field of psychology actually has that are trusted. Was there anything at all in the taught content which you liked? I didn't realise the DSM-V was that bad. If research on trans people can be cherry-picked, then does that mean that some reliable research exists?

[AdieuToLogic]

> As someone with zero knowledge of psychology, I'm biased against it.

Then you are biased against "the science of mind and behavior"[0] by definition.

> For a while I've thought it would be nice to know what results the field of psychology actually has that are trusted.

Perhaps that people who seek out and engage in therapy with qualified professionals can (but not always) improve their lived experience?

Or that by studying the mind and human behavior, mental illness is now considered a medical condition, worthy of treatment, and has much less social stigma than years past?

0 - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/psychology

[dehrmann]

> One of our classes being thrown in limbo for several months after we found out that a bunch of foundational research underpinning it was entirely made up (See: Diederik Stapel).

I wonder if you can sue for fraud over this. The researcher knowingly deceived academia, and it's foreseeable that students would then pay to study the the false research.

[fsckboy]

>P-hacking rampant

give us your best academic hypothesis as to why p-hacking is rampant: I'll bet it will sound like psych analysis

[erikerikson]

Incentives. Straight outta the dismal science.

[fsckboy]

people go into academia for the money? no. they do it for the recognition they seek, the status they will attain. publish or perish.

[erikerikson]

> publish or perish

Yes, that's the summary of the incentive system. It's not a highly remunerative profession although the rockstars can do quite well (usually through side gigs).

Practitioners of economics accept many types of scarcity and currency. Consider, for example, the marketplace of ideas paid for with attention, belief, energy spent spreading our favorites.