[ttt_]

Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue.

In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration:

1) make his own assesment and check against the test score,

2) realize that the test is supposedly validated against a sample, and if the candidate falls out of that sample (non-native english speaker), the test should probably be disregarded.

Carefull when disregarding a whole field based on preconceptions. All fields have different branches and disagreements. True some fields like psychology have a harder time producing great professionals, in my assesment. I think it's because of it being a young field and it's hard to agree on what the standards are to measure good/bad practice.

[Fuxy]

What are you talking about psychology is awesome i am quite interested in the field however HR's use of psychology by just ticking boxes is not correct. They don't understand it so they are unable to apply it without ticking boxes. That form is completely useless in London for example where about 50% of the population is a non native English speaker.

[lutusp]

> What are you talking about psychology is awesome i am quite interested in the field however HR's use of psychology by just ticking boxes is not correct.

I think you should ask yourself some hard questions about psychology. It's true that psychology's current practices are rather unreliable, but it's not obvious how to solve that problem, given the field's subject, the human mind. If the target were the brain, that would be different, but the mind is not the brain.

[Fuxy]

If you're trying to say psychology is not an exact science I agree. You can't use psychology to make exact predictions of how people will behave however the more you learn about psychology the better you get at figuring out people and make a educated guess what motivates them.

For instance i find myself using MBTI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator ) a lot when meeting new people and tailoring my approach in a way that is meaningful to them.

The solution is simple teach HR psychology but don't make it the be all end all solution in hiring people it should however be a tool in their tool box and they should use their best judgement. Or thrust the IT staffs judgement at least.

[lutusp]

> If you're trying to say psychology is not an exact science I agree.

It's not a science at all. Sciences make observations, then craft generalizing theories to explain the observations, then test the theories in unrelated contexts, then discard those theories that fail. This is certainly not how psychology works. In psychology, it's commonplace to see a therapy for a disease whose existence hasn't yet been established, or that was brought into being by a secret vote rather than a microscope (as was true during the DSM-5 editorial process).

Am I exaggerating the requirements for real science? Let's perform a thought experiment to see. Let's say we can have science without theories, only with observations, as in modern psychology. Here goes ...

Let's say I'm a doctor and I've created a revolutionary cure for the common cold. My cure is to shake a dried gourd over the cold sufferer until he gets better. The cure might take a week, but it always works. My method is repeatable and perfectly reliable, and I've published my cure in a refereed scientific journal (there are now any number of phony refereed scientific journals). And, because (in this thought experiment) science can get along without defining theories, I'm under no obligation to try to explain my cure, or consider alternative explanations for my breakthrough — I only have to describe it, just like a psychologist.

Because I've cured the common cold, and because I've met all the requirements that psychology recognizes for science, I deserve a Nobel Prize. Yes or no?

Ask yourself what's wrong with this picture, and notice that the same thing is wrong with psychology — all description, no explanation, no established principles on which different psychologists agree, no effort to build consensus, and no unifying theories.

> You can't use psychology to make exact predictions of how people will behave however the more you learn about psychology the better you get at figuring out people and make a educated guess what motivates them.

Only if you're suffering from a bad case of confirmation bias. You need to understand that psychology is undergoing a major upheaval eight now, mostly because of improvements in neuroscience that suggest neuroscience will eventually replace psychology, in the same way that astronomy replaced astrology in the 17th century.

[disgruntledphd2]

You appear to be suffering from a misapprehension.

Psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology

Psychiatry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatry

Note the not to be confused with introduction on Wikipedia.

They are quite different, and while I agree that DSM-5 was a disgrace, that was somewhat inevitable given the commercial pressures involved.

Its worth noting that I agree with your major point, but it applies to psychiatry (more specifically, the DSM) rather than to psychology.

[lutusp]

> You appear to be suffering from a misapprehension.

Both are studies of the mind. Psychiatrists are psychologists with an M.D. degree.

Psychology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology

Quote: "an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and behaviors"

Psychiatry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatry

Quote: "the medical specialty devoted to the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders."

See the word "mental" in both definitions? Neither studies the brain, neither is scientific, and the distinction between them is more a matter of history than topic.

I ask that you think about what you're saying. If human psychology were a science, then its two major subfields, psychiatry and psychology (there are actually 54, but never mind), would be looked on as intimately related to human psychology and to each other.

Would you argue that cosmology and particle physics aren't related to each other because they study different things, i.e. one studies the universe at the largest possible scale and the other at the smallest? Most scientists would disagree because these two fields rely on physics and physical theory for their scientific standing.

> but it applies to psychiatry (more specifically, the DSM) rather than to psychology.

False. Both psychiatry and psychology rely on the DSM as a diagnostic guide.

Link: http://www.psychiatry.org/practice/dsm

Title: "DSM"

Quote: "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States ... It can be used by a wide range of health and mental health professionals, including psychiatrists and other physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurses, occupational and rehabilitation therapists, and counselors. "

> I agree with your major point, but it applies to psychiatry (more specifically, the DSM) rather than to psychology.

On the contrary, it applies to both, because both psychiatry and psychology depend on the DSM's imagined authority for diagnosis and treatment guidance.

If the DSM were to suddenly disappear, psychologists would have no therapeutic guidebook. That wouldn't stop them, of course, but it would be disrupting and embarrassing.

If human psychology were a science, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because psychiatry and psychology would be looked on as branches of a science with more similarities than differences, just as with cosmology and particle physics.

[rafcavallaro]

There is no such thing as an inexact science. If it is science, it is exact; if it is inexact, it is simply confirmation bias fodder.

[Fuxy]

I call it inexact because you can't use the classical way of proving theories right or wrong. There's no mathematical calculations you can do to figure out all the implications of that theory. The theories are based on observations of human behavior and they most likely do not cover all edge cases they are however the best we got at the moment in describing human behavior and motivations.

If this were to happen in physics we'd call it it a failed or incomplete theory.

[lutusp]

> I call it inexact because you can't use the classical way of proving theories right or wrong.

If you cannot clearly and empirically prove a theory wrong (in principle), it is not science. Falsifiability is required for science and scientific theories. This doesn't mean all scientific theories are false, it means all scientific theories must not fail a comparison with reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

Quote: "The strength of a scientific theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain, which is measured by its ability to make falsifiable predictions with respect to those phenomena."

On that basis, psychology is not a science.

> If this were to happen in physics we'd call it it a failed or incomplete theory.

If this were to happen in physics, people would abandon it, as they abandoned astrology and alchemy.

[lutusp]

> Not all psychologists see eye-to-eye on the tests issue.

But psychologists don't see eye to eye on anything -- that's one of the obstacles to turning psychology into a science.

> In the case mentioned in the article, even a professional that truly trusts the tests should have taken into consideration:

> 1) make his own assesment and check against the test score,

On the contrary, if psychology were a science, a clinical psychologist administering a standardized test should produce the same high correlation with reality as a clinical doctor administering a standardized test. But this is certainly not the case, and one of the reasons for this discussion is that psychologists are often married to the outcome of a test that isn't a reliable measure of its subject. A psychologist's confidence in a test's unreliable results is an obvious theme in the linked article.

> Carefull when disregarding a whole field based on preconceptions.

Tell that to Thomas Insel, director of the NIMH, who recently and reluctantly decided to abandon the DSM, psychiatry and psychology's standard diagnostic manual, on the ground that it's becoming less scientific with each new edition:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201305/the-...

My point is that, when a field's opinion leaders disregard a whole field, it's no longer a preconception.

> All fields have different branches and disagreements.

When a medical doctor says you have cancer, it's 99% certain you have cancer. When a psychologist says you have Asperger Syndrome, the reliability of the diagnosis is so unreliable and divorced from reality that the diagnosis has been reluctantly abandoned after an epidemic of phony diagnoses.

The same pattern applies to most other psychological diagnoses and decisions -- they are very subjective. Tom Widiger, who served as head of research for DSM-IV, says "There are lots of studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one particular disorder and really don't systematically assess for other disorders. They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in treating and believe that most of their patients have."

> I think it's because of it being a young field ...

Psychology and psychologists have been around making pronouncements since before the U.S. Civil War. That makes psychology one of the oldest fields that has scientific pretensions.

> it's hard to agree on what the standards are to measure good/bad practice.

Yes, true, which is why psychology is now being replaced by neuroscience -- the latter can produce more objective results.