[Cloud]

Well, is it ?

I read this article 2 months ago (I'm sure someone has read it here):
http://www.arachnoid...logy/index.html

If not then I'll go over the main point the author tries to make:

He says that psychology ISN'T a science because it isn't a strict discipline as all the other sciences such as Biology, Chemistry and Physics. He goes on to say that different types of mental illnesses are being 'founded' by the hundreds every year and this number is expotentially growing and so soon
"no behaviour will be normal."

He says that there is ethical restrictions on experimenting on humans (because there is) preventing proper analysis of psychology/psychological methods.

Even if we could cut up humans and their brains, we don't even fully understand the brain so we wouldn't even know what were're looking for.
There is no way of quantifying this. There is just too much variability (aka. 50:50) and not enough science (100%). He actually relates psychology to religion as a belief system.

I think its quite a good article. I'm still pretty confused on the area.
What do you all think?

Discuss.

[Genecks]

Psychology is a social science.

However, I believe it has more to do with science than the other social sciences. One could argue sociology is more of a science, but I disagree. Sociology comprises of people bitching about morals and society and how they think it works and why it works.

I consider psychology part of neuroscience; neuroscience is part of science; therefore, psychology is more of a REAL science than history or other social sciences.

It may not be a strict discipline, but at least it is a discipline that has the ability to be on a microscale and observable.

I don't have a time machine right now; therefore, I can't go back into the past. I can't view the world's population; therefore, sociology seems somewhat futile and mutable. Psychology relates to neuroscience which is an actual science; since it has a tie to a real science, it has the ability to have science exported and imported.

For the rest of my college career, I'm going to take psychology courses unless forced to do otherwise. All the other social sciences are crap and unrealistic in my opinion. Much of history was written by aristrocrats, which can alter the the true view of how the past really was. Much of sociology and other social sciences are biased. Psychology tries not to be biased at all, and psychology does not want to be biased unless things are left to interpretation. Some people in sociology avoid bias; however, bias is very reoccuring in sociology when it comes to social issues.

I don't care about social issues. I call it all artificial and natural selection and say screw sociologists.

Normal never existed anyway. There was, however, always a constant.

Psychology is a subpart of neuroscience, which is part of science.

[xDiViNiTix]

i believe psyc is definitely a science...considering you run tests, form hypotheses, observe and analyze results from experiments, and everything else that a normal "science" comprises of...actually...pretty much anything can be a science...it all depends on how u look at it...

[bluesmudge]

but what defines a science exactly?

[badchad]

A lot of people discount psychology because it deals with a lot of subjective topics: consciousness, "thinking" etc.

Nowadays however a lot of psychology research follows the scientific method. In addition a lot of psychologists perform experiments using objective data (e.g. quantitative changes in neurotransmitter levels etc.). Thus, IMO psychology is definetly a science.

[Genecks]

badchad said:

In addition a lot of psychologists perform experiments using objective data (e.g. quantitative changes in neurotransmitter levels etc.). Thus, IMO psychology is definetly a science.

Exactly.

Psychology could be seen as the qualitative part of neuroscience.

[silkworm]

How does this make you feel?

Psychology is not a natural science simply because it is based in what we interpret as behavior positive or negative behavior. It is WAY TOO objective to be considered a natural science, which is what neuroscience is. Most of it's data is equivocated and most of its conclusions are only philosophical. That is very different than a natural science such as, chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy.

Neuroscience deals with how the brain works, psychology deals with behavior. There's a lot of chemistry and biology in neuroscience. There's a lot of open ended questions in psychology. It judges mental processing versus mainstream brainwashing. Who cares?

I habitually must deal with a psychology PhD who wouldn't know science if it made him borderline, but he does well enough in his field.

I'm not calling it worthless. Developmental psychology has a lot of merit, but I would never call psychology a natural science.

[Genecks]

Psychology is the study of behavior.

If a person were to change the neurobiology/neurochemistry of an individual, then the behavior of the individual would change.

Thus, a person would study the qualitative result from the quantified making.

I suppose if I were to make a drug to change an individuals behavior, I would want a psychologist viewing the patient. To use a neuroscientist would probably be useful in brainscans, but not observable behavior among people.

[scicop]

Psychology is definately a science. And in the clinic it is an extremely important tool for improving patient respones. Psychology the study of human behavior, and in the clinical setting, pyschologist have various tools at their disposal to measure human behavior and make the correct assessment and determine if patients are resonding to therapy.

As briefly mentioned in a post above, human behavior is hard to measure/quantify since humans are individuals! Everyone has a different response to certain stimuli (stress, work, family, ...experimental paradigms), and therefore much of the quantification of human behavior in psychology is done through established scales.

For example, in measuring depression, there is the HAM-D scale, as well as guidelines from certain authorities, such as the APA, or the DSM-IV. So in a sense a psycologist has a way of measuring patient behavior by the use of scales that allow for a diagnosis/assessment/ data point gathering.

So, for example, psychology is especially important in clinical trials. So staying with the depression idea, if you want to assess the effectiveness of an anti-depression drug or a therapy (Cognitive Behvioral, CBT, let say), you turn to the field of psychology, and use their scales to measure patient outcomes. Of course, now its extremely important to mention statistics.

Statistics is an extremely important tool for psychology. This way they can differentiate between patients who are in different experimental groups as well as assess if drug effect (or CBT) is significant to lets say a placebo group (or another form of therapy...i.e. quick-inteventions). So this is one way psychology, is a science and is of clinical relevance.

One other way psychology is important is through pyschosocial interventions that increase patient compliance to treatment therapy. Among the top reasons for patient non-responsiveness to drugs is patient non-adherence to treatment protocol (the don't take their medication). Today, more and more, drugs for mental disorders (depression, anxiety, alcohol dependence, bipolar etc) are being approved by the FDA under the condition that there is psychosocial therapy program that given concurrently and following drug adminstration, to ensure patients are adherent to pharmacotherapy (see the recently approved drugs for alcohol dependence). Few clinical trials are published today without psychosocial programs, or board certified pyschologist..yes..psychologist....AND psychiatrist...at the clinical trial site(s).

So, in summary, psychology is a science, and is clinically relavant, and its attempt to understand and quantify human behavior is a necessary componant of not only drug-development/therapy, but also ensuring patient outcomes through improving patient adherence to medication.

There are other ways psychology is a science, but I'll let others put in their two cents.

One more thing: Even though a psychologist may not know biochemistry, or neuropharmcology at the molecular level as a natural scientist would, it doesn't mean they don't know science! They know the science of their field! They practice their science and probably have more mathematical skill sets and abilities (statistics) than most laboratory scientist (I'm a former PhD lab scientist..and worked with a PhD pyschologist..everyone went to that pyschologist for their statistics..even physician department chairmans and PIs of pharma/govt funded clincal trials!!).

[whiteboywushu]

Psychology doesn't qualify as being a science! Psychology is just an opinion of a person, by a person who is biased by their own beliefs and behaviours. Psychologist's believe they conduct experiments! Bull Schlaka! You can't conduct an experiment without a constant! There's no such thing as a constant in the human brain! You don't have to be very smart to get into psychology at uni, therefore, can't be a real science!

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

whiteboywushu, on 3 July 2011 - 12:45 PM, said:

Psychologist's believe they conduct experiments! Bull Schlaka! You can't conduct an experiment without a constant!

Then why have mathematicians spent so much time developing the field of statistics? It is designed precisely to draw conclusions from data that is not always constant or predictable.

whiteboywushu, on 3 July 2011 - 12:45 PM, said:

You don't have to be very smart to get into psychology at uni, therefore, can't be a real science!

Science is more than just smart people writing papers.

[PhDwannabe]

Quote

Psychologist's believe they conduct experiments! Bull Schlaka! You can't conduct an experiment without a constant! There's no such thing as a constant in the human brain!

Can you define "constant" in this context in any kind of rigorous way? What exactly needs to be "constant" in order to conduct experiments?

Suppose I give two groups of people adrenaline shots without their explicit knowledge of what's in the shot. (Naturally, my shot-giver assistant doesn't know either.) Suppose I then expose one of those groups to a room full of confederates who also claim to have received the shot, and seem to be acting somewhat agitated. The other group sits in a room full of confederates who seem to be quite giddy. Then I observe behavioral and physiological data, as well as collect self-report data, from the subjects. Of course, I'll also be doing all this same thing to two other groups of people who've received saline shots. I wonder if the results--mean group differences, let's say, between certain reliably coded behavioral indices, or subjects' reports of emotionality--might tell me anything about the way human beings perceive emotional experiences?

Can you tell me why this double-blind, placebo-controlled design isn't an experiment?

Quote

You don't have to be very smart to get into psychology at uni, therefore, can't be a real science!

I wonder if the 200 people rejected yearly from the average doctoral program--or the 10-ish who get in--have anything to say about that? Being part of the latter group, I imagine I could think of a few choice words.

[insane_alien]

whiteboy, it sounds like you are confusing pop psychiatry with psychology. one is a load of mince and the other is a science (hint, psychology is the science)

it may not have started out as a science, but it did develop into one.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

PhDwannabe, on 3 July 2011 - 04:55 PM, said:

Can you tell me why this double-blind, placebo-controlled design isn't an experiment?

It may be an experiment, but it's clearly not a psychology experiment, because a psychology experiment requires a tall, well-dressed white-bearded man and a leather couch. Everyone knows that.

[Marat]

First I would dispute the assertion that social or humanistic studies are worthless because they are not natural sciences. Fields outside the natural sciences operate not by measuring data to predict the future by hypotheses based on the data, but instead develop hypotheses to guide the interpretation of human behavior, thinking, texts, and culture. They are 'sciences' of 'Verstehen' (understanding), as Dilthey pointed out, not of prediction, so their intellectual project is simply incommensurable with that of the exact sciences, rather than inferior to it. Everything worth the attention of human thought doesn't have to involve mathematical laws predicting how particles will move under various conditions.

Second, it is important to distinguish psychology as brain physiology, which is close to the exact sciences, from psychology as the classification of mental disorders in the DSM-IV, which is in many cases just the expression of social policing dressed up as science. If you do research on the role of hyperglycemia's effect on brain neurons and its relation to Alzheimer's disease, that is no different from ordinary science, yet it could still arguably be classified as psychology, especially if you related cerebral hyperglycemia to changes in behavior.

But when earlier versions of the DSM classified being homosexual as a mental disease, at least until that diagnosis became so politically incorrect that it had to be dropped from the DSM in 1977, then that type of psychology is just pure social fascism posing as science. Some clinical entities in psychiatry seem so clear and coherent, are found in so many cultures, and have such predictable courses -- such as schizophrenia, for example -- that their ontological status seems perfectly reliable and an acceptable basis for scientific theorizing. Other clinical entities, such as depression, however, seem more like excuses to sell expensive pills to people who are reacting perfectly normally to unpleasant life circumstances. The fact that psychology can't clearly separate the wheat from the chaff in its collection of clinical entities certainly undermines its claim to being a science.

[PhDwannabe]

Quote

But when earlier versions of the DSM classified being homosexual as a mental disease, at least until that diagnosis became so politically incorrect that it had to be dropped from the DSM in 1977, then that type of psychology is just pure social fascism posing as science. Some clinical entities in psychiatry seem so clear and coherent, are found in so many cultures, and have such predictable courses -- such as schizophrenia, for example -- that their ontological status seems perfectly reliable and an acceptable basis for scientific theorizing. Other clinical entities, such as depression, however, seem more like excuses to sell expensive pills to people who are reacting perfectly normally to unpleasant life circumstances. The fact that psychology can't clearly separate the wheat from the chaff in its collection of clinical entities certainly undermines its claim to being a science.

Psychology can't separate the wheat from the chaff? As I assume you're aware, Marat, the psychiatrists handle the DSM. Do psychologists serve on the committees? Yeah. But because of biomedical power and piss-poor advocacy on the part of our professional organizations, we're largely along for the ride on that thing. You won't find a lot of psychologists defending the biomedical, "atheoretical" disease-model of the DSM. That's a universe that we grudgingly exist in so we can get paid.

[Marat]

In all these sciences of the mind its hard to distinguish boundaries. At the end of the 19th century, Hugo Munsterberg and William James were still arguing about whether psychology should be a part of the philosophy department, and now there are borderline questions between psychology and psychiatry. Even within the ontology of psychiatric disease entities, there was a scandal a few decades ago when it was found that British and American psychiatrists were constructing schizophrenia diagnoses differently, according to which side of the Atlantic the patients presented.

So, yes, I would agree that the problems with the diagnostic entities of the DSM, which are generated by the mutual guilt of psychiatrists and less so by psychologists, and used by both psychiatrists and psychologists, cross boundaries between psychiatry and psychology.

[Conor]

I can't speculate on the rest of the world because I frankly don't know, however most high-schools and universities in Australia consider psychology as a science. Whether it's a natural science is up for debate. Also most of the psychology courses Iv'e looked at, at a graduate level also require the involvement of a decent amount of biology and some introduction to chemistry so to say that psychologists, even at a graduate level, have no scientific knowledge would just be plain wrong.

whiteboywushu, on 3 July 2011 - 12:45 PM, said:

You don't have to be very smart to get into psychology at uni, therefore, can't be a real science!

If this is a serious response then I pity you.
It's like saying because penguins can't fly they aren't real birds.
What proof do you have that you don't need to be very smart to get into psychology at uni? Can you define smart and how does not being 'very smart' and doing a particular subject therefore make it unscientific?

[CaptainPanic]

Mandatory XKCD:

[Taylor]

Some psychological questions lend themselves better to "science" than others. Much of psychology is correlational, but you can certainly perform scientific experiments from which you can draw causal inferences. Yes, there are certainly restrictions on what you can control, and certainly not just from an ethical standpoint. But the same is true of biology.

What you can't do with psychology that you can do with physics is predict individual behavior. Some might argue that certain laws exist from a conditioning/behaviorist school, but for the most part, psychology is vastly more complex than something like physics - truly understanding it is beyond our capacity to comprehend - thus, the need for probability and statistical analysis.