Is experimental psychology science?

i dunno. why don't you ask your husband...i'll answer the second first since it's easier. why would a child with a history of bed wetting affect this. well, bed wetting can result from and certainly contributes to anxiety. this can manifest itself in anxiety about success. this could lead him to do badly on any test immaterial of his age. how many old people wet their pants? think about that.why do old people and young people score differently on memory tests? easy. because old people aren't learning anymore and so their brains don't respond as quickly. try doing the same test on people in school and people who have been out for six months. i think you'll be surprised at the result. oh but what? your test-retest method has a six month layover? guess what. they're different subjects in six months. ask a scientist if they'd ever use a test-retest method.

thank you. christ sake. it took two days.

To find a solution, you first have to know the cause. In the case of medicines, I grant you that a lot of them are just treating the symptoms, but I do think that a lot of genuine scientific research is needed to make these medicines, if only to find out what would be an effective way of treating the symptoms.

The "uncertainty" in quantum mechanics results from a mathematical necessity having to do, I believe, with something called Planck's Constant. There's no problem in regard to scientific method in quantum mechanics.In Psychology, matters are somewhat different. We are not talking about mathematical necessities when we speak of the difficulty of controlling variables. It's a practical matter. However, originally, on the other thread, what I was saying was that "soft science" is not science. So I would say now, having learned a little more, that to the extent that psychology uses soft science, it is not a science. To the extent that psychology uses hard science (isolatable physical evidence --studies of some part of the brain, for example), then it's science.This is not to say that soft science is not valuable. It may be very valuabe.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 10-19-2005 10:03 AM

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what? oh please. i've never criticized anyone in this discussion, i only asked you to leave me alone. which you have yet to do.

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You know a good way to stop reading someone's responses to you?Stop reading the responses they write to you.

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i dunno. why don't you ask your husband...

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You dunno?Then shut up about your uninformed opinion of experimental psychology.Seriously.

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i'll answer the second first since it's easier. why would a child with a history of bed wetting affect this.

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I wasn't clear.I am talking about adults with a history of childhood pants wetting.

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well, bed wetting can result from and certainly contributes to anxiety. this can manifest itself in anxiety about success. this could lead him to do badly on any test immaterial of his age. how many old people wet their pants? think about that.

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Lots of old people are incontinent due to things like muscle weakness and prostate problems.Lots of pants wetting in children is caused by similar undeveloped muscles.But the rest of your supposition about "test anxiety" is self-selected selected against because the vast majority of subjects in such experimental trials are volunteers.

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why do old people and young people score differently on memory tests? easy. because old people aren't learning anymore and so their brains don't respond as quickly.

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But why do you automatically assume that there is a difference between young and old subjects in ALL memory tasks?There isn't.Some seniors do just as well as younger subjects on certain memory tasks.See. You don't know what you are talking about. Just using your "common sense" and the psych 101 class from Freshman year somehow isn't enough.What a surprise that must be to you.

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try doing the same test on people in school and people who have been out for six months. i think you'll be surprised at the result.

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But Psychology isn't science, so the results are completely meaningless because we can't control for ANYTHING AT ALL, right?

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The "uncertainty" in quantum mechanics results from a mathematical necessity having to do, I believe, with something called Planck's Constant. There's no problem in regard to scientific method in quantum mechanics.

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But what I was responding to was the following statment by Brennakimi:

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"by calling it a science, you are limiting the brain to specific, easily predicted, unchanging patterns. and i can't agree with that."

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The point in bringing up QM and the other examples is that it is quite unpredictable and complex and uncertain, yet nobody denies that these fields are not science, or "soft" science.Let's ignore the quantum mechanics example for now.What about the other two examples I gave?

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In Psychology, matters are somewhat different. We are not talking about mathematical necessities when we speak of the difficulty of controlling variables. It's a practical matter.

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That is also true of mutations in Biology and weather phenomena in Meterology.

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However, originally, on the other thread, what I was saying was that "soft science" is not science. So I would say now, having learned a little more, that to the extent that psychology uses soft science, it is not a science. To the extent that psychology uses hard science (isolatable physical evidence --studies of some part of the brain, for example), then it's science.

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This is not to say that soft science is not valuable. It may be very valuabe.

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So, do you classify Genetics/Biology or Meterology as "soft science"?But anyway, regardless of your opinion, very good science has been as is currently being done in Psychology even when the brain is not being studied.Have you heard of Elizabeth Loftus? She is a research Psychologist which is famous for her groundbreaking work on false memory. Her most famous study involved the implantation of false memories in people and the surprise was how easy it is to do so in a significant percentage of the study participants.You can read about her work hereShe doesn't study the brain. She does behavioral research Psychology.So according to you, is all of her work maybe to be viewed as "iffy" or "soft"?

Trust me, studies of some part of the brain can be very bad science, or pseudoscience.It is not WHAT is being studied, but HOW.I gave an abstract of a paper in which the only data being analyzed was the subjective ratings of "trustworthiness" and "approachabitly" of people in pictures or of people described in written (or verbal) descriptions. The groups of subjects were "controls" and people with brain damage to the amygdala.You backed off of the strong version of your claim when presented with this abstract. I'm assuming you consider that paper "science", although you didn't comment in detail, so correct me if I'm wrong.What if the groups of people were "controls" and "people with a history of sexual abuse". Or controls and "people who have been diagnosed with anxiety disorder". Or controls and, well, whatever.Would that still be science? Note that the methods and analyses and type of data would still be the same.

The abstract looked to me like there was physical evidence that had been isolated properly so that the scientific method could be used.When I get a chance, I am going to study the example that Schraf provided and see if I can come up with something more definite and knowledgable to say. So far my ideas have been rather vague.ABE: maybe I'll learn something.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 10-20-2005 02:19 PM

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The abstract looked to me like there was physical evidence that had been isolated properly so that the scientific method could be used.

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When I get a chance, I am going to study the example that Schraf provided and see if I can come up with something more definite and knowledgable to say. So far my ideas have been rather vague.

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ABE: maybe I'll learn something.

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That would be awesome, RR, thanks.

I think that what psychology and others are is actually "hard" science as noted above.That is the problem isn't that they aren't being conducted with scientific rigour; the problem is that it is hard to do it well. Chemicals tend to behave themselves and stay in their test tube and behave rather predictably. The chemicals of psychology are anything but well behaved. The critisms calling psychology a "soft" science may be more because it is in fact a "hard" (as in difficult) science .

I agree completely.

This is complicated because the experiment has to do with implanting false memories. The question I have about this survey method is our inability to know whether or not the participants are telling the truth.In this case, we have some participants remembering a false memory that had been suggested to them. But they might not be actually "remembering" this pseudo-memory. They might be consciously pretending to falsely remember it, which is not the same thing as actually falsely remembering it.The recounts of court cases at the beginning of the article tells me there are a lot of quack psychiatrists out there who claim to be doing something scientific.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 10-25-2005 01:37 PM

I agree to some degree. But some subjects place research beyond science, especially when they assume their conclusions within their research. This is to say a lot of Psych ends up being deductive rather than inductive and so pseudo science at best and nonscience at worst.Neuro and cognitive are examples of generally solid psych research. Clinical and Evo are examples of generally poor psych research.I notice that in a list of titles you included this non-gem... I'll admit to not having read the article, but it appears to be EvoPsych. Connections between attractiveness and health and especially connecting such a thing to evolution is inherently deductive, ethnocentric, and pure speculation.Do you actually feel like that article would be a good rep of brain research? Hopefully you can see that the former is vague and open to arbitrary (cultural influenced) assignment, and the other though at least factual is still reliant on cultural concepts as well as assumptions about the nature of their control group.This is another danger area for Psych: correlation studies. This is probably the same as my earlier criticism of deductive methodology. It seems many Psych researchers want to make something out of making conclusions about brains from what amounts to social demographic studies. Very sad. Even with an assumed proper "control group" this still doesn't do much as far as science goes.I will note here again that the top two US Psych organizations have said that research must confine itself to supporting legal and popular social beliefs.It would be unthinkable for the top Physics orgs to state research must confine itself to supporting political and popular assumptions about how the universe works.That does speak volumes about the nature of Psychology versus other sciences. Not that it says there is nothing good or scientific within Psych at all, but that there is enough which is not and enough support for nonscience that it has a way to go as a field of science.I have taken Psych courses, and my gf is studying Psych (going for neuro), so I'm not just speaking from ignorance or basic bias against Psych.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Re: Evo-Psych.I haven't read the article in question, so I won't comment on its quality. I only included it as an example of biological explanations within psychology, as a counter to the claim that psychology is hostile to biological explanations. This is indeed a sad state of affairs, but the blame here must rest primarily on an increasingly theocratic government threatening these groups. This was a strategic move on their part to prevent drastic governmental oversight and interference. Better to have a toothless policy yourself than to have an ignorant Congress institute oversight themselves. I'm not happy about any of this, but it has far more to do with politics than the status of experimental psychology as science. It isn't "unthinkable" for me. It wouldn't happen right here, right now. But similar situations have happened in the past, and I, for one, won't rule it out for the future, either.