The Science of Pyschology

[Robert]

This topic came up during a discussion in another thread and it seemed like a good topic for debate.

I, for one, simply do not view psychology as an exact science insofar as it allows multiple interpretations as a diagnosis.

As an example, if someone has cancer, they have cancer. There is no room for interpretation, it is a medical fact based on medical research.

But, in the case of psychology, let's say a person commits a vicious crime. Depending on the psychologist, or even the psychiatrist, often times it seems that there is no exact diagnosis beyond an informed opinion as to the reasoning behind the person's actions. This can vary depending on the analyst. As such, how can psychology be considered an exact science?

[Epinephrine]

you are talking about clinical psychology. psychology as a whole is much, much, more than that. there are no illnesses per se in psychology. if a person has some discomfort, they will try to treat it in any way they can, and there are different pathways for that.

don't think of psychology as clinical psychology. that's like thinking medicine is all there is to biology.

[Robert]

Epi, I'll be the first to admit that I have not read up on this subject a whole lot. My opinion stems mainly from those who in my life who have gone to some form of therapy for one reason or another. (like a Marriage counsellor). When I talk to those folks afterwards, it seems like one giant crock because often times they have seen more than one counsellor and receive different advice from each one.

If it is a science, I'd certainly be interested in hearing how.

[Robert]

Here's an interesting article link I found earlier. It is on the York University site about "Classics in the History of Psychology"

I thought this was an interesting read and certainly gives me the impression that this is not an exact science.

[ebola]

Epi, I'll be the first to admit that I have not read up on this subject a whole lot. My opinion stems mainly from those who in my life who have gone to some form of therapy for one reason or another. (like a Marriage counsellor). When I talk to those folks afterwards, it seems like one giant crock because often times they have seen more than one counsellor and receive different advice from each one.

If it is a science, I'd certainly be interested in hearing how.

Epi's right. Clinical psychology is not really the best place to evaluate the field of scientific psychology.

Psychology is a science, like any other science, insofar as its theoretical frameworks are hypothetical explanations which explain current empirical data and make predictions of the results of further experiments. Some research I've been working on, for example, suggests that one of the mechanisms of attention is the supression of "noise" in non-attended locations. This hypothesis has been tested in several experiments, but could also be disproven if another better, more fitting hypothesis comes along. This is the process of science.

We also have to remember that any science, insofar as it is vital and being enriched with new findings, is not an exact science. Take the field of particle physics, for example. There is some fuct up **** going on there. It seems that the activity of the observer influences the behavior of reality. There are mutliple explanations being put forth, such as the notion that there are infinitely many universes, or the the observer "collapses the wave-form". Hardly exact, but it is science at its best.

ebola

[ebola]

That being said, there are many currents within psychology that are hardly scientific, but they are beginning to be eschewed in favor of more scientific theories. Look at the writings of Freud. Are these really the simplest possible mechanisms we can propose to account for human behavior? :)

ebola

[kirkjobsluder]

This topic came up during a discussion in another thread and it seemed like a good topic for debate.

I, for one, simply do not view psychology as an exact science insofar as it allows multiple interpretations as a diagnosis.

Well, this is a big question. Are there really any exact sciences out there? In the sciences we don't say "this is an exact fact" we say "this is what the evidence says, with N% level of uncertainty". If you want "exact" science is the wrong domain, go look at mathematics.

In addition, this makes the big whopping mistake that psychology as a science is primarily concerned with diagnosis! Get thee to a basic psychology textbook and come back when you can talk about these things!


As an example, if someone has cancer, they have cancer. There is no room for interpretation, it is a medical fact based on medical research.

As someone who went through the process of having been mistakenly diagnosed and treated for cancer, I think you are being quite naive here. Cancer diagnoses is just as much a matter of interpretation and heuristics as any other reseach field (and don't let anyone tell you that biology or physics is any different.) What happened was that two different doctors took a look at my radiography results and developed an opinion (which is why we say "get a second opinion") regarding how likely the unknown object was to be cancerous, and how dangerous it would be to my long term health. They both said something similar to "In 95% of the cases I've treated, this has turned out to be renal cell carcinoma." Quite a lot of "exactness" there.

Medicine is hardly an exact science either. If you really want to know how it works, there is an excellent collumn that runs in _Discover_ every month in which a doctor writes about developing an interpretation of the symptoms faced with increasing costs and diminishing returns on lab tests.


But, in the case of psychology, let's say a person commits a vicious crime. Depending on the psychologist, or even the psychiatrist,

You do know what the difference is between a psychologist and a psychiatrist is, don't you?


often times it seems that there is no exact diagnosis beyond an informed opinion as to the reasoning behind the person's actions. This can vary depending on the analyst. As such, how can psychology be considered an exact science?

Well, again. Isn't this making a big assumption that the goal of psychology is diagnosis, or even to build an explanation regarding how and why a person might have made various decisions in their life. Psychologists, like medical doctors, microbiologists and quality control engineers are not in the business of making exact explanations, but playing the odds. If an object in the kidney has a certain profile on x-rays and ultrasounds, it is deemed likely to be renal cell carcinoma. If a bug is gram negative, digests lactose and can tolerate air, it is likely to be E. coli. Out of 100 hot water pipes, 3 are expected to break within 6 months.

It seems as if you are just arguing against a stereotype here. The forensic expert who sits as a witness and says, "he hated his mother" with an air of authority and profundity. Forensic psychology is perhaps the weakest branch of psychology because it tries to grapple with the least predictable segments of the population. This is, however, just a small part of what psychology as a field is about.

[kirkjobsluder]

That being said, there are many currents within psychology that are hardly scientific, but they are beginning to be eschewed in favor of more scientific theories. Look at the writings of Freud. Are these really the simplest possible mechanisms we can propose to account for human behavior? :)

ebola

This is really amazing to me because Freud was contraversial when he started for his tendency to create entire myths out of a handful of observations, and has pretty much been surplanted by later cognitive-behavioral theories 50 years ago.

How is it a science? Well, because it follows the scientific method of proposing a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and refining the hypothesis based on the discovered information. So for example, psychologists interested in attention might conduct experiments to determine what kinds of background noise or activities are most likely to cause serious errors. Someone interested in interface design might conduct experiments to determine the optimum number of menu items. Someone interested in learning theory might conduct experiments to determine whether behaviorist environments or constructivist environments produce the best long-term gains. Neuropsycholigists might be interested in correlating a particular cognitive activity (imagining how to make a flint axe) with patterns of brain activity.

[Robert]

In addition, this makes the big whopping mistake that psychology as a science is primarily concerned with diagnosis! Get thee to a basic psychology textbook and come back when you can talk about these things!

Hehe, not even the first response and already getting confrontational :D

As I stated above, I am *not* well educated about psychology. The only course I ever took was the basic Psych 101 backin my first year of college as an elective. It bored the heck out of me. I leaned towards the "sciences", not the electives.


What happened was that two different doctors took a look at my radiography results and developed an opinion (which is why we say "get a second opinion")

Right. BUT, a doctor could also do a biopsy to determine cancerous cells without a doubt.


Medicine is hardly an exact science either.

Would you not agree that medical science allows a doctor to effectively diagnose a problem with less chance of error than a psychologist diagnosing someone?


You do know what the difference is between a psychologist and a psychiatrist is, don't you?

Of course. I mentioned both specifically in my earlier statement as I was referring to a criminal proceeding where it is possible that one, or both, types may be used to provide a "professional opinion" about a particular person.


Isn't this making a big assumption that the goal of psychology is diagnosis

It is the diagnosis accuracy of psychology that I am skeptical.


It seems as if you are just arguing against a stereotype here.

On this, you are actually probably right. It is these "experts" that do indeed make me skeptical because there seems to be such varying interpretations depending on the psychologist. It's like there are no consistent diagnosis among analysts. It just often times comes across as an opinion, not as an actual fact. Right or wrong, that is what makes me wonder about the validity, or accuracy, of the diagnosis.

[kirkjobsluder]

Right. BUT, a doctor could also do a biopsy to determine cancerous cells without a doubt.

But, even biopsies are a matter of interpretation. What happens in a biopsy is a pathologist takes a look at a cluster of cells and puts a rough number on the probability that the cells don't look like "normal cells". Why don't they look like normal cells? Could be cancer, could be a bad stain, could be cells at the edges of what is "normal". For many cancers the differences might be difficult to spot, and the pathologist also has to think about whether the biopsy in contaminated by cells from outside of the suspect mass. The bottom line is that biopsies are hardly an "exact science" either, and error rates on biopsies are high enough that a second opinion is always recommended.

But, while the issue of error is interesting and worth discussing, it has no bearing over whether psychology is a science. Psychology is a science when it follows the scientific method. There are quite a few sciences that are even worse than psychology when it comes to error (cosmology comes to mind where the error is orders of magnitude rather than slices of a standard deviation.)


Would you not agree that medical science allows a doctor to effectively diagnose a problem with less chance of error than a psychologist diagnosing someone?

It depends on the problem. There are many problems that medicine has a pretty bad track record of identifying. There are many problems that psychology has a pretty good record of identifying (such as abnormal language development, dyslexia, and severe autism.) I find that well-designed exams are quite accurate at diagnosing whether a lesson worked or not, and which individuals may need more assistance. Usability testing is accurate at finding problems with how computer inerface designers try to communicate to mere mortal users. Like it or not, standardized entrance exams are reasonably accurate at predicting college performance. Focus group testing is reasonably accurate at identifying which media images appeal to the most people.

But this entire argument is based on a faulty analogy of psychology=medicine. A much better analogy is that psychology is to psychiatry what physiology is to medicine. Psychology is the science of understanding how the human mind works. Physiology is the science of understanding how the human body works. As a educational psychologist, I'm rather less in diagnosing what problems a person might have, than developing good instruction.

[Max Power]

The bottom line is that biopsies are hardly an "exact science" either, and error rates on biopsies are high enough that a second opinion is always recommended.
Indeed it takes a battery of tests to determine the exact nature of an "anomoly" but that "anomoly" has an exact nature, which the ontologist needs to discover in order to successfully diagnose. There may be errors made, but that is a fault of the doctor's process and diagnosis and so on. The fact remains that a successful diagnosis in a biological disease is a matter of fact: One has cancer, influenza, a throat infection, etc,., or one does not. This is not the case in many mental health practitioner's job.


That being said, there are many currents within psychology that are hardly scientific, but they are beginning to be eschewed in favor of more scientific theories.

...and there are many that are rejecting scientific theory or at least putting it on the back burner. The areas of clinical psychology and counseling psychology are being split down the lines of a similar debate as this one. That is, counselors and doctors training to treat those disorders that tend to be the more severe mental disorders, often the biologically-rooted sort, follow a more scientific-practice education model. On the other hand, the fastest-growing post-graduate field of education is in counseling psychology, which tends to deal with less severe, and more commonplace disorders (i.e. depression, anxiety, OCD). The latter also has a large trend veering towards the very unscientific approach of life-experience oriented "existential" and "phenomenological" practices of psychological counseling.

As for whether these are sciences, I think one clearly seems more scientific than the other. But few mental health counselors have as much exactness to rely on as the ontologist, for example, has in that there is cancer there or there is not. The ontologist certainly can misdiagnose, but there is a difference of degree, I would argue, in the rate of misdiagnoses in bilogical disease diagnosis and in mental health diagnosis.

Still, what if they both follow the scientific model? Does that make them a science? I can follow the scientific model in mowing my lawn. Does that make it a science? I think it does! But I also think that it is often as inappropriate in counseling to be so scientific as it is to be such a way in mowing the lawn.

[Lothar M Kirsch]

Would you not agree that medical science allows a doctor to effectively diagnose a problem with less chance of error than a psychologist diagnosing someone?
Still that doesn´t make medicine an exact science. It may have more rooting in exact sciences like biochemistry or other than psychology. But there are still aspects of vagueness. Medicine can also be an art, hardly a science then. I´m happy to work together with the psychologist of our hospital , but he would never tell people that his findings are absolute truths.
Cancer has been mentioned. I had one patient, where I diagnosed a lung cancer, that could be operated. The surgeon called me to come into the operation chamber and showed me the lung, told me that he won´t take away more, because it was cancer-free. I told him that I doubted that, but could not prove it. Though the part of the lung was proven free, where he cut it away, it turned out later that it wasn´t the case. The cancer had spread and another operation could not be done. What I want to illustrate is, that medicine isn´t exact as physics and will never be. But I can live with this; perhaps the art is not to forget that the patient is a fellow human being and make medicine as exact as possible.

[soilman]

I agree with ep that the field of psychology encompasses more than clinical psychology, and that there is such a thing as scientific psychology. That said: clinical psychology is not scientific, and I agree with robert that the opinions of clinical psychologists who have interviewed defendents on trial, should not be recognized as expert opinion in court. This is a job for the court. By farming the judgements and opinions out to psychologists, the judge and jury are reneging on their responsibility to render the judgements. And unfortunatley, many clinical psychologists are all to eager to fill in, for the proper fee, when the court system is reneging on its responsiblity.

[Epinephrine]

exactly. abnormal psychology was the worst psych course i ever took, and why is that? in the first few pages of the book the guys couldn't even be conclusive about the definition of a disorder. but as far as the testing for treatment is concerned, they certainly follow the scientific method.

also, i've never studied Freud in psych. Freud is now strictly in the field of philosophy because, simply put, it's unscientific as can be. i have noticed though, that some, er, not so "good" universities do teach Freud in psychology, but only if you're getting B.A. in psy, absolutely *not* if you're getting a B.Sc.

[soilman]

epinephrine writes "but as far as the testing for treatment is concerned, they certainly follow the scientific method"

Not sure what you mean by "testing for treatment." Psychological testing is one of the most unscientific things imaginable. Rorshak tests? This is pure "magic" not science at all.

[Thalia]

Rorshak tests? This is pure "magic" not science at all.
Surely you are aware that there is an entire field devoted to psychometrics- the study of psychological measures. Not only do Rorschach tests not diagnose specific disorders, but I don't even think they are that commonly used anymore. They are more a tool than a test.

[Epinephrine]

Rorschach inkblots are a part of psychoanalysis and they are unscientific. they are not a tool for diagnosis.

psychoanalysis, Freud, Jung and the like are in the field of philosophy and not psychology.

testing for treatment: aside from testing for the medication just as they do in medicine, the non-chemical treatments are tested in the exact same way. when the symptoms of the disorder are less obvious, they are analyzed after questionaires and a professional assessment. the same is the case in medicine, like migraines and heartburn. there is no little machine that measures how strong your symptoms are. the patient is the one who has to provide this information.

[soilman]

ep writes:
=============
when the symptoms of the disorder are less obvious, they are analyzed after questionaires and a professional assessment. the same is the case in medicine, like migraines and heartburn. there is no little machine that measures how strong your symptoms are. the patient is the one who has to provide this information.
=============

Right. and in those cases, the diagnoses and treatment are largely art, not science.

[kirkjobsluder]

epinephrine writes "but as far as the testing for treatment is concerned, they certainly follow the scientific method"

Not sure what you mean by "testing for treatment." Psychological testing is one of the most unscientific things imaginable. Rorshak tests? This is pure "magic" not science at all.

Most psychologists gave up on inkblot tests over a generation ago because they don't seem to correlate with anything.

[Joe]

... I agree with robert that the opinions of clinical psychologists who have interviewed defendents on trial, should not be recognized as expert opinion in court. This is a job for the court. By farming the judgements and opinions out to psychologists, the judge and jury are reneging on their responsibility to render the judgements. And unfortunatley, many clinical psychologists are all to eager to fill in, for the proper fee, when the court system is reneging on its responsiblity.


Except that Robert did not say what you are attributing to him.

[freemouse]

I am about to get a Ph.D thing in neuropsychology but heck I don't know what is "psychology", the longer I stay in this area, the more confused I get. :sick:

[Robert]

Except that Robert did not say what you are attributing to him.

Joe, in my earlier post, I made reference to being skeptical of a psy's "expert opinion" in a criminal proceeding.

[kirkjobsluder]

I don't know. If the case involved a question regarding photographed tire skidmarks at the scene of the crime, I would expect to see expert testamony from a tire specialist describing how one can identify a particular type of tire. If the case involved DNA evidence, I would want to see expert testamony from a geneticist describing how that evidence is compared to known samples. So if the case involved a claim that the defendant was insane at the time of the crime, I would want to see expert testamony from someone who works with crazy people. I don't see how it is any more prejudicial than having a DNA expert speak, nor do I think that it takes any authority away from the jury to decide the case.