Is psychology a science?

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Just read an interesting essay--here's the introduction and link:

Since its first appearance in 2003, this article has become required reading in a number of college-level psychology courses. Because this article is directed toward educated nonspecialist readers considering psychological treatment, students of psychology are cautioned that the terms "psychology" and "clinical psychology" are used interchangeably.

The field of human psychology is a powerful force in modern society, and its influence is widespread – in language, law, the social contract, and in our perception of ourselves. Because legal decisions are sometimes made based on psychology, decisions that might cause someone to be incarcerated or freed, it is important to establish whether psychology is a science or a simple belief system. We should determine whether psychology can be relied on to objectively support the social and legal policies that are based on it. In modern times, such a serious public burden can only be borne by a field that is based on reason, on science. Which leads to our question: is human psychology steered by science?


http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/

Psychology that actually suggests a tangible, factual statement or that has empirical evidence (case studies) is science. Models like Freud's division of the human mind into id, ego, and superego, are not science. Neither are statements that grossly oversimplify human psychology, such as Freud's suggestion that all human endeavors have a sexual motive.

I've written a small article in 2000 about similar subject. While I agree with mr. Lutus, I often see commom people utilizing such arguments to discredit non scientific subjects as garbage, and it's all the same, just two sides of same coin. Science is but a method, a great one, the best we have to investigate phenomenae due to its universality. Still, any conclusions driven by results of experiments are still interpretation, just theories, as Paul clearly puts it; and such, also promote a system of belief. What is knowledge? What validates it? That's a bigger question that every philosopher tries to respond, and the main point in here.

I think it is telling that the head of the APA's goal of more evidence-based psychology is being met with so much resistance from the status quo.

to the extent that psychology makes testable definitive predictions, it is a science.

ruveyn

This article needs to be stickied all over the freakin' forum, and pointed out every time someone goes nuts over official-diagnoses vs. self-diagnosis, agonizes over the DSM, prepares to use their life savings seeking an official diagnosis, etc.

A religion pretending to be a science, is causing so many of us to be stuck in special ed., drugged, etc.

Hmmm...Let's start our own religion, with ASD behaviours & tendencies as its tenets. For its members, to have a good afterlife you have to at least act autistic. Heck, lying is already supposed to be bad in most religions, ours would just really, really mean it! Then at least we'd be covered under "freedom of religion" and could even sue those who try to shut us down.

The essay ignores the basis for mental illness, that being either not fit to function normally (ie cannot work, etc.) or just many percentiles from the middle of the bell curve, and then assumes psychology just makes stuff up.

It assumes that there's blurring of research and treatment in a bad manner because the only ethical opportunity to study mental abnormality is to see it happening instead of causing it, but also condemns it for doing just that (lobotomies)

It references stuff that happened in the early 1900s and assumes that is the state of play now.

It assumes psychodynamics is current psychology

Claims pseudoscience that benefitted itself by using the word psychology is somehow related to the field, as if snake oil sellers ruin the name of chemistry.

Ignores research methods used in psychology (this is googlable, books everywhere)

It's exaggerative, but the neuro and biological branches are the only hard science parts. The rest were made in a time without the technology for those to exist.

I think there are some very good psychologists using scientific method to produce high quality studies, but they must be in a tiny minority of all psychology graduates. There are also high quality psychological studies produced by other scientists. I have seen plenty of studies showing that psychological and psychiatric journal articles are consistently the worst of any scientific discipline on measures of statistical credibility, replicability, method and data.

The biggest problem is that it is so easy to complete graduate studies without any science, and end up as an accredited psych. Of all the psychs I have ever met, only one was a competent statistician. The practice of psychology and psychiatry is, on the whole, by graduates who are not applying scientific method and have no skills to critically appraise scientific studies relevant to their own work.

Human psychology very much is a science. And it is every bit as hard as the other hard sciences like biology, chemistry, and physics. In fact, most introductory psychology books begin a discussion about the human brain.

If any of you are wondering how well tested psychology is, all one has to look at is the number of peer-reviewed articles that are published daily on sites like PubMed.

With that said, there are crackpots in psychology, like Freud. But then there are crackpots in any field of science you choose. The only difference between Freud and the rest of them is that Freud just simply gets more airtime in the popular media than does an "engineer" striving to create a perpetual motion machine or sell snake oil.

I'm beginning to wonder if part of the reason the bottom feeders in these professions (like Dr. Israel at JRC, for example) get away with pretending their woo is "real research" is that the rest are too afraid of a slippery slope type situation to denounce them as they might otherwise.

Whether we deem it a science or not seems almost irrelevant when it comes to the studies produced by the profession. The studies performed by conscientious researchers that prioritize good study design and take care not to over-interpret data results are more likely to produce good data and suggest meaningful conclusions. The studies performed by people with a personal or financial interest in the results tend to produce biased data and misleading conclusions.

It's the same as the rest of science. Except it isn't.

It's a crying shame that some people still believe that vaccines cause autism long after Andrew Wakefield has been exposed for the greedy fraud he is, but at least he was exposed. His peers called him out and debunked his ridiculous claims and bad science. They told the world how he subjected little autistic kids to colonoscopies that resulted in one colonic perforation for profit and without permission. But psychology and psychiatry have been remarkably quiet about their peer at JRC who shocks little kids for swearing and toilet training accidents.

If they want the respect that the name "science" entails, then they should start learning the meaning of peer review and stop looking the other way when woo starts masquerading as science in their field.

Any subject including psychology can be approached scientifically or un-scientifically. The scientific method, i.e., hypothesis testing and experimentation, can most certainly be applied to human psychology. Whether or not the research is good, defensible, and valuable depends on the skill of the...scientist.

The subject of "psychology" is very broad.

There are many different methods of psychotherapy- it's difficult to tell if they are even remotely "scientific" or not.

But the study of cognitive psychology, and human behaviour, are true sciences, with large amounts of supportive data.
We are only realizing in the past 50 years how much our behaviour is "hard wired".
It is critically important to study and recognize human psychology, before we totally trash the entire planet.

Too many people consider psychology "just a theory", or some kind of Freudian intellectual exercise, but that's not true anymore.