[lutusp]

> To be fair to the poster you're replying to, he did mention reading Thinking Fast & Slow which is by the nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

When I read this, I realized something was wrong. Psychology isn't a science, and scientific Nobel prizes are awarded for scientific breakthroughs. So I looked it up and discovered that the psychologist Kahneman won the Economics Nobel, which makes more sense (economics isn't very scientific, but it's certainly more scientific than psychology).

A quick search reveals that a psychologist has never won a science Nobel for psychological work. As in the above example, the notable work of some psychologists is recognized by awarding a Nobel in a more scientific field, to avoid polluting the Nobel's reputation and opening the door to awards in any number of other pseudoscientific fields.

[rickhanlonii]

You make a valuable distinction; Kahneman did not win the Nobel for psychology, and in fact there is no such thing.

But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples.

[lutusp]

> But to call psychology a pseudoscience confuses either the definition of science or of psychology.

It certainly doesn't call into question the definition of science -- that's well-established by a consensus among scientists. The consensus is secure enough that science is now written into law, for example laws meant to prevent Creationism from being taught as science in science classrooms. Here is an excerpt from one such law now on the books (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) (there are many):

1. It is guided by natural law;

2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;

3. It is testable against the empirical world;

4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and

5. It is falsifiable.

Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. Therefore, based on society's accepted definition of science, psychology is not a science.

This isn't remotely controversial, in fact society is moving away from psychology toward neuroscience as we speak. The director of the NIMH recently ruled that the DSM (psychology's "bible") can no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. In his explanation (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) the director said:

"While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."

"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." [emphasis added]

> In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman spends the majority of each chapter outlining scientific studies in detail, many that he personally carried out, making the text a 500 page atlas of counter-examples.

Yes, but these are descriptions, not testable, falsifiable explanations. Science requires explanations, explanations that can be empirically tested and possibly falsified. But because this is a discussion of science, let's prove this point with a thought experiment -- 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?

[bad_user]

> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world")

That's not what falsifiable means.

> 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.

Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works. That statement, taken literally, is provably false, as sooner or later somebody will die even if you're shaking a dried gourd over his body. But lets say that you meant the cure improves the condition of those that suffer from common cold, or that simply we want to find out before anybody dies.

Well, we can do doubly-blind A/B testing and measure several things, like the presence of the associated symptoms, its progression, the average duration and so on. And nowadays, any treatment must beat the placebo effect in order for it to be considered valid.

But lets say that we couldn't determine if this particular cure is valid or not. It would still be falsifiable, because it's related to things that we'll be able to measure in the future, if we can't already - like the autoimmune system's response to this treatment.

[lutusp]

>> falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world")

> That's not what falsifiable means.

You truncated the original, cut out an essential word, then argued against the edited version. Here's what I said:

> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. [emphasis added]

In point of fact, empirical, falsifiable evidence is the only legitimate basis for theories that should be discarded if reality disagrees, and on which the notion of falsifiability depends -- that's how it's defined.

The meaning of falsifiability is that a reality test decides whether a given idea has merit, not philosophical weight or rhetorical argument. And if the reality test fails, a scientist discards the failed idea. A pseudoscientist may elect to discard reality instead.

> Because the common cold has a non-zero mortality rate, you can't say that your cure always works.

Yes, and on that basis I can claim that my idea is falsifiable. But until I take the daring step of trying to explain what I have described, I haven't crossed the threshold of science.

That's why I use this example -- it has empirical evidence, it is falsifiable, it is replicable by dispassionate third parties. It has everything that psychology recognizes as science, except the crucial element of theory, of explanation. Because psychology is satisfied to describe without making an effort to explain, so am I.

[bad_user]

My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world. At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false.

When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future. Mental illnesses are very much real and because of that it is entirely possible to measure the effectiveness of a psychological treatment.

The problem with many psychological treatments is the same problem we have with nutrition - doing studies is excruciatingly hard because the validity of a test is compromised if the patients aren't kept under observation 24/7, because patients have a tendency to lie or to forget, so short of keeping them locked in a cage for the next 10 years, we lack the capability of keeping them under observation and this is necessary to eliminate variables that could have an impact on the result. Doubly-blind tests are also excruciatingly hard sometimes - for example, in regards to nutrition, the only way one could conduct such a test would be to control the patients' basic senses. And in the future, we may be able to directly measure the body's reaction to a treatment, which would eliminate the need for A/B testing entirely.

Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.

[lutusp]

> My point that I failed to explain is that falsifiability is a much more abstract notion than testability in the empirical world.

Not in science. In science, falsifiability means the failure of an empirical test, a failure that invalidates a claim.

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

Quote: "The concern with falsifiability gained attention by way of philosopher of science Karl Popper's scientific epistemology "falsificationism". Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience. This is often epitomized in Wolfgang Pauli famously saying, of an argument that fails to be scientific because it cannot be falsified by experiment, "it is not only not right, it is not even wrong!"" [emphasis added]

> At its essence, a theory is falsifiable if it is possible to come up with an argument that proves the theory to be false.

No, falsifiability in science means that an empirical test -- a test against reality -- proves a claim to be false. In science, falsifiability is not about philosophy or rhetoric, it is about empirical tests.

> When it comes to treatments of all kind, all of them are falsifiable, as long as the treatment involves the promise of effects that we can observe either now or in the future.

In psychology, defined as study of the mind, none of those are falsifiable in a scientific sense, because the mind is not a source of empirical evidence.

> The problem with many psychological treatments ... [etc.]

Your paragraph explains why psychology is not and cannot be scientific.

> Bottom line is that us being unable to measure the effectiveness of a treatment, doesn't make that treatment unfalsifiable.

On the contrary, that is exactly what it means. No objective empirical evidence on which similarly equipped observers can agree, ergo no falsifiability, ergo no science.

In any case, falsifiability is only one missing property in psychology. Another is psychology's tendency to be satisfied to describe what it should be explaining. Are testable, empirical explanations required for science, or are descriptions adequate? To find out, read my description of a phony cure for the common cold posted above. It shows that explanations are a requirement for science, and to avoid all sorts of quackery.

[singingfish]

OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science. The remainder of the discussion is quite tedious, and shows that the OP has a very confused notion of mind body separation (hint, by and large they are not, whether you're a dualist an epihenominist or something else - I tend to something else but wouldn't feel confident to write my viewpoint down).

What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology. This could be OP's second point of confusion. Essentially the only time real experiemnts as opposed to quasi-experiments are possible in science is where a known physical quantity is already well understood (e.g. moles of Hydrogen, quanta of photons, metres of distance, joules of energy etc). Where complete control over a known physical quantity is not practical, the only possible experimental design is in fact a quasi experimental design. However, to claim that quasi experiments are not valid is to deny a large amount of scientific knowledge, and flies in the face of deductive logic.

Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring. The discipline of psychology was the original field that enabled the types of statistical analysis that underpin much of the modern economy. Psychology provided the intellecutal basis of using single case studies (e.g patients with a rare or unique illness) to further scientific understanding. In psychology this resulted in much of our understanding of the functions of different parts of the brain prior to the development of neuroimaging.

Finally, lots of concepts in computer science originate in psychology - heuristic being the one that comes to mind at the moment. My entire development methodology is based on the idea that human short term memory is fixed to 7±2 items (based on data from quasi-experimental studies). Thus when I am writing code my primary purpose is to only have to attend to 5 things at a time, at most, as this is the lower bound of the reliability of my short term memory.

[lutusp]

> OP is incorrect that psychology is not a science.

Pretend to be a scientist and post your evidence. Here's mine -- the director of the NIMH has recently ruled (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...) that the DSM (psychology's "bible") may no longer be used as the basis of scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content. The director went on to say:

"The goal of this new manual, as with all previous editions, is to provide a common language for describing psychopathology. While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."

"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better." [emphasis added]

There is often an embarrassing degree of self-reference in discussions where psychologists try to claim that psychology is a science. The defenders invariably see no need to produce evidence for their claim, as though evidence is irrelevant in a discussion of science. And for a typical psychologist, saying psychology is a science is expected to end a conversation, whereas for a scientist, that claim can only begin a conversation in which evidence rules.

> Next up we have this whole notion of falsifiability. It's a red herring.

Only if science isn't defined as it is in the law -- which it is. Science-defining laws are on the books to keep Creationism out of public school classrooms, and while crafting those laws with the assistance of expert witnesses, guess which non-negotiable criterion always appears in the final ruling? Falsifiability.

Here is one such ruling (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html) -- science must have these properties:

1. It is guided by natural law;

2. It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law;

3. It is testable against the empirical world;

4. Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word; and

5. It is falsifiable.

I bring up this law to make perfectly clear that falsifiability, empirical evidence, and the other standard requirements for science, are only red herrings to people who think they can define science any way they please. For a scientist, obviously this kind of argument is unnecessary -- they already understand what science requires.

> What is correct is that experimental designs are more or less not possible in behavioural psychology.

Wait, what? Because one cannot design reliable experiments in psychology, therefore psychology is scientific? On what basis -- that real science is too difficult?

> This could be OP's second point of confusion.

The only confusion is yours.

[rickhanlonii]

>Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity, psychology cannot produce empirical, falsifiable evidence ("testable against the empirical world") to supports its claims. Therefore, based on society's accepted definition of science, psychology is not a science.

Psychology is defined as the scientific study of mental functions and behavior--not the mind. Therefore, since scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior, Psychology is a science.

And as I said before, in Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman outlines many of these studies, and the citation section of his book serves as an atlas of counter-examples to your position.

I've refuted the central point of your argument, and therefore have no logical obligation to address the rest of your points. If you intend to argue, you must necessarily refute my claim by proving the studies I cite in my argument either are not scientific or do not concern mental functions or behavior.

It's a long list so if I were you I would get up early, eat my Wheaties, and instead of trying to prove me wrong, think about how ridiculous you carried yourself in this thread.

[lutusp]

> Psychology is defined as the scientific study of mental functions and behavior--not the mind.

Let's look up the definition of psychology and see if it corresponds to your claim:

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

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

No denial that the mind is the focus of psychological research -- not surprising, since the word "mental" fully acknowledges the role of the mind. This means psychology relies on the mind for its content. And the mind cannot produce empirical evidence.

Next Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#Criticism

Quote: "Criticisms of psychological research often come from perceptions that it is a "soft" science. Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn's 1962 critique[68] implied psychology overall was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking the agreement on overarching theory found in mature sciences such as chemistry and physics."

"Because some areas of psychology rely on research methods such as surveys and questionnaires, critics have asserted that psychology is not an objective science. Other concepts that psychologists are interested in, such as personality, thinking, and emotion, cannot be directly measured[69] and are often inferred from subjective self-reports, which may be problematic."

Gee, that sounds familiar.

> Therefore, since scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior, Psychology is a science.

Not without the empirical evidence that the mind cannot produce, or an effort to shape empirical, testable, falsifiable theories. But don't take my word for it -- because this is a discussion of science, let's try a thought experiment -- 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?

> And as I said before, in Thinking, Fast and Slow Kahneman outlines many of these studies, and the citation section of his book serves as an atlas of counter-examples to your position.

False. These are descriptions, not explanations, and they do not shape an "overarching theory", for the lack of which every commentator has criticized psychology for decades. Science requires explanations. I should tell you that this is not a new argument -- it's been put forth any number of times in the history of psychology, most recently by the director of the NIMH in his recent ruling that the DSM may no longer be used as the basis for scientific research proposals, for the simple reason that it has no scientific content (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...).

> I've refuted the central point of your argument ...

You have done nothing of the kind. You do realize, don't you, that scientific discussions must be accompanied by evidence, yes? Where is your evidence that mind studies can produce empirical evidence or theories?

Where is the physical location of the mind? Where is the objective evidence in support of any part of psychological research, on which different observers are forced to agree? If I attach electrodes to a brain, do I connect to the mind, or have I crossed over into neuroscience, a separate field?

More evidence for the fact that psychology is not science --

Title: "Why psychology isn't science"

Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-...

Quote: "The dismissive attitude scientists have toward psychologists isn't rooted in snobbery; it's rooted in intellectual frustration. It's rooted in the failure of psychologists to acknowledge that they don't have the same claim on secular truth that the hard sciences do. It's rooted in the tired exasperation that scientists feel when non-scientists try to pretend they are scientists."

"That's right. Psychology isn't science."

"Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability."

> ... and instead of trying to prove me wrong ...

If you had any understanding of science, you would know that:

1. The burden of evidence is not mine, it is yours.

2. The claim that psychology contains science somewhere is unfalsifiable in the same way, and for the same reason, that claims of Bigfoot sightings are unfalsifiable, for reasons given here:

Title: "Russell's teapot"

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

Quote: "Russell's teapot, sometimes called the celestial teapot or cosmic teapot, is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others ..."

> ... think about how ridiculous you carried yourself in this thread.

Guess what? Shifting away from legitimate arguments to argumentum ad hominem is a widely recognized acknowledgement of defeat.

[rickhanlonii]

> Where is your evidence that mind studies can produce empirical evidence or theories?

In the citation section of the book. Until you refute this evidence, the claim "scientists publish peer-reviewed scientific papers with empirical, falsifiable, evidence for theories about mental functions and behavior" stands.

[com2kid]

> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity,

That is a false statement, your mind is quite physical!

(and indeed you call upon neuroscience in your very next line!)

[lutusp]

>> Because psychology's topic is the mind, and because the mind is not a physical entity,

> That is a false statement, your mind is quite physical!

Citation needed. No responsible practitioner in the field of psychology argues that the mind is a biological organ or an empirical part of physical reality.

> and indeed you call upon neuroscience in your very next line!

Now I see what I'm up against. Neuroscience studies the brain and nervous system, not the mind.

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

Quote: "Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system."

[com2kid]

> No responsible practitioner in the field of psychology argues that the mind is a biological organ or an empirical part of physical reality

Huh? What psychologists do you go to, ones only attached to churches?

I'm not going to bother arguing against mind body dualism[0], I have better things to do with my time! I am however confused, you bring up criticisms of a field not acting scientifically, but it appears you are then arguing in favor of pseudoscience of the worst sort, unless I have misconstrued your position.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%2...

[lutusp]

> I'm not going to bother arguing against mind body dualism ...

Good idea, you aren't qualified. Meanwhile, the mind is not a physical organ and it cannot be relied on to produce empirical evidence or falsifiable theories. This is a burden on psychology, it has been since the beginning of the field, and it explains why psychology has been determined not to be a science by scientists:

Title: "Why psychology isn't science"

Link: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-...

Quote: " Psychology isn't science. Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability."

The above explains why psychology is being replaced by neuroscience, the study of the nervous system. This change means we can gather actual data and shape real theories.