I tend to mostly disagree with the cited article. By this article, I would imagine that every social science would be called a "religion", which is not really accurate to any reality. Given all of the social sciences that don't follow Mr. Lutus's rules on science, I would have to outright question the validity of his claim about what defines science, as if psychology were the "bad apple" then he might have a point, but if common parlance disagrees with him, then it is time to question his usage of terms. I would also go further and claim that the nature of science isn't based upon the rules of evidence to as great of an extent as the fallibilism and theorizing expressed by science. Finally, even PhD possessing SCIENTISTS admit to the existence of scientific facts, so for Mr. Lutus to say what he feels like is fine and all, but I can even cite practicing modern scientists outside of psychology saying that certain scientific ideas are facts, and they aren't being silly when saying this either. For all of those reasons, I have to question Mr. Lutus, as he makes big claims, but these claims stand against the rest of our reasoning, and I do not trust him as a philosopher of science.
As for clinical psychology being not very scientific, the problem is that regular medicine has some of those problems as well, so blaming psychology and psychology alone seems questionable. Just look at any doctor that prescribes prozac for something other than depression. Economist Robin Hanson actually talks about the problems with medicine in this paper, which is better cited than Mr. Lutus's paper. http://hanson.gmu.edu/feardie.pdf
The article also over-emphasize psychodynamic theories and through this fails to recognize that psychologists do serious research. Even psychodynamic psychologists do serious research, as I have a book on clinical psychology written by a member of the psychodynamic school(I know, rather extreme in representing the most criticized part of psychology) however, on many of the points in the textbook, the author cites research, which goes to question the idea "they're all making this up". As well, every science that exists has had bad research come out, and various mistakes, so saying "psychology makes mistakes", well whoopty freakin' doo! If the best examples are the early 20th century, then psychology hasn't done so bad.
Even further, a diagnostic manual by its nature cannot be scientific, but rather is merely a practical categorization. Maybe naive psychologists treat it as if it is some law written onto reality, but frankly, the recognition that psychological realities were more complicated than this goes all the way back to William James for goodness sake. Rather, the use is always practical, and often there is no need for a chemical test for something to be of practical use.
So, really, I don't think that Mr. Lutus's paper is very solid. I would not recommend it being taught in a psychology course. I don't think he really has as solid of an understanding of issues as he thinks he does, and I don't think that what he presents or even cites is so damning.
04 Jul 2010, 5:21 pm
