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by bad_user
4507 days ago
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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. |
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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.