Thankyou for your web site, I have enjoyed reading your articles, and I absolutely agree with you on the Microsoft issue. Just a point on psychology though, I do agree with your fundamental telling of what science is, and some of your comments about psychology and scientific theory. Firtly, you appear to be only addressing mental heatlh an assuming that it represents all of psychology. No, I don't say or imply that. Through the example of clinical human psychology I show that psychology itself doesn't bear scientific fruit. Each field based in science has to be able to show results, both as public validation of its theories and methods and as a form of internal evidence. In shaping theory, physicists must eventually be able to make a prediction that is followed by an observation. For human psychology, a prediction about the field's chosen topic must eventually be followed by repeatable confirming evidence. That is why I chose this approach — there is no repeatable, reliable, testable content in human clinical psychology. Psychoanalytic theory, for example, isn't even taught on many psych programmes or only as an example of how not to do scientific experiemtation. Yes, which is why I didn't dwell on this aspect of psychology — even psychologists openly acknowledge the barrenness of this area, so there is no point in belaboring it. But as to clinical practice, the practice that ought to be informed by theory, that is a different story. Second, no subject is a science ... Physics is a science. Mathematics is a science. Your argument reduces to saying that unscientific fields are not sciences. I think we can agree that fields that are entirely reliant on scientific methods for their theories and results are ... sciences. ... it is about the degree to which scientific method can be applied to it that matters. So physics comes out tops and english comes out bottom. Psychology, sociology, and astrology come out at the bottom — all repeatedly make claims they cannot prove. English is amenable to lexical analysis, for example in gathering evidence that Shakespeare did or did not write the plays attributed to him. This ranks English above human clinical psychology, because (a) tearing books apart has no ethical dimension, and (b) the nature of the evidence is much better than that available to a practitioner of human clinical psychology. Psychology has a multitude of sub-divisions, ranging from cognitive science/AI or bio-physiology thrugh to some very wooly, existential stuff. Until theory is followed by repeatable evidence, until a psychologist can assert and prove that a specific recovered memory is bogus and some John Doe was jailed for no reason, it is all "very wooly, existential stuff." But this is not the case. Human psychology has the social position and responsibilities of a science but does not have the substance. Scientific method is as applicable to some of these areas as it is in pure physics. Yes. Unfortunately, my topic was human clinical psychology, a field bereft of scientific evidence or methods, for a number of reasons including ethical ones. Third, understanding humans requires the full breadth of all our subjects, scientific or otherwise. My article deals with the fact that psychology tries to present itself as a science, to the degree that courts of law rely on psychological expert testimony to decide peoples' fates. Your riposte in essence says that psychology relies for its meaning on things outside psychological theory. But I think the above resulted from carelessness, not intent, because science doesn't work this way. Psychology is not a discipline that can be dichotomised into either science or not science (art, as some would have it). Hold on. Now you are defending one point of my article, that psychology has no specific theoretical content. Psychology is not a science, it possesses no central body of theory, which is why these other areas creep in unnoticed and uninvited. We appear to be in agreement. Any psychologists real focus is to make meaningful sense out of chaos And they cannot do this, because human psychology has no testable content, either because of the obvious ethical issues, or because the experiments fail to produce anything repeatable. - sometimes it is appropriate to use a scientific approach (e.g. in the lab) and at other times to develop expertise in helping others interpret their values and meaning in life, whether in mental health, work or family. My article is solely meant to show that human psychology is not a science, and is about as effective as astrology in dealing with matters of fact as opposed to opinion. You are now reduced to offering agreements. Fourth and last - just because a drug can treat e.g. depression does not mean cured, or that withholding therapy automatically means eventual self-cure (thats a very bad understanding of limited research). Be that as it may, since I never tried to make these points, you have now left any part of my article, and therefore the conversation. In any case, the argument deserves to be turned on its head: in controlled, repeatable scientific experiments, psychology has not shown that its treatments are better than no treatment. For example, some people with post-traumatic stress disorder do get well without treatment - but many who do not receive appropriate treatment not only live a lifetime with the psychological consequences, they also go on to develop other problems that have a terrible effect on their lives. And the testable correlation with psychological treatment is nonexistent. You posed the above argument as though the connection with psychological treatment was obvious. And despite your comments about the DSM, we know about it's limitations extremely well and know how to work with them. 1. If a scientist said this about a scientific textbook — "We know about its limitations and we know how to work with them" — he would be laughed out of his field. When something like this happens in science, the textbook is discarded along with its defects.

2. What? When did this discussion become a matter of "we"? If you intend to post and pose as a psychologist, you need to introduce yourself as such, not slip in a familial "we" late in the discussion. Surely you realize this. Please be careful - I promise to be as careful as the psychological expert witnesses who, through lying in court, caused many people to be jailed for nonexistent crimes. The standard of responsibility has been set by psychologists. I am not under a greater burden, but I accept one by pointing out the poor quality of the evidence. This is something psychologists should be doing, were it not for the issue of vested interest. to non-psychologists you paint a convincing picture. To non-psychologists I explain the same facts you appear to be in agreement with. As a psychologist ... This should have been the first line in your post, not nearly the last. I can understand your POV and in some ways agree, however the article is somewhat biased and lacking in depth. I would have written a deep article, but to do so, I would have had to choose a field with some depth. Examples:
A Calculus primer
Why is the sky dark at night?

The originator of the above message, a psychology Ph.D., replied to the above by asking what academic standing I had to criticize psychology. Those schooled in science will recognize this tactic as "argumentum ad verecundiam" or "argument from authority", a logical error that can have no place in a scientific debate. I pointed this out to the correspondent, who then abandoned any pretense of addressing the topic and attempted to defend clinical psychology as a non-science.

In response to Is Psychology A Science ... Wow! I do not know why you wrote this article but you obviously have it in you to criticise psychology. Translation: I have legitimate grounds for asserting that clinical psychology (1) is not a science but (2) is in a position of authority that must be reserved for disciplines grounded in science. And that I can express those grounds clearly. So far, so good. I had the patience to read your thing fully, I hope you will have the patience to read this fully in return. I have only one ground rule, based in fairness and a desire not to waste my time: I will read what you have to say in reply to my article until you completely abandon the article's topic. Between men of science who share ideas. Yes, I am a psychologist. You cannot be both a scientist and a clinical psychologist, at least not in the way the latter is practiced in the U.S. Well, now I read the story of Jim and his narcissitic mom and I understand better your angle. "My angle?" This treads close to the idea that personal motivations are more important than evidence. My article presents the evidence, and in fairness you should discipline yourself in the same way. Still, I feel you are throwing the baby with the bathwater. How does this address the question of whether psychology is a science? I don't criticize art because it is not a science — it doesn't have to be, and no one expects or requires it. Art functions just fine without a scientific basis. On the other hand, artists don't put people in jail by offering bogus expert testimony, while clinical psychologists do. To bear this burden of social responsibility, psychology would have to be a science, and because it is not, society has misplaced its trust.

I'm not throwing out the baby, I'm throwing out the bathwater. Einstein was a great scientist but his work did enable atomic war. Please try to think more deeply. The fact that scientists produced atomic weapons only proves that science is more effective than rain dances or talk therapy. Scientists also produced all the vaccines ever invented, as well as the idea for a vaccine. Vaccines have saved far more lives than atomic weapons have taken. It seems you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Any form of science is dangerous. Okay, by turning to a sophomoric criticism of science, you have entirely abandoned the topic "Is Psychology a Science?" and there is little point in seeing where you wander from here. Science is dangerous because it works. Psychology is dangerous because it doesn't. But you cannot produce a vaccine using psychology. There are charlatans in every field and people who will misuse any form of authority. It does not make it any less science. Yes, it does — it means exactly that. Fields where charlatanism prevails over evidence are not scientific, because science relies on evidence, not persuasion. If you see a public discipline that is ruled by charlatanism, by false ideas, it is ipso facto not a science.

At this point it is abundantly clear that you do not understand science. Any science answers the easy questions first. Psychology maybe psychology does not know what to do with Asperger`s syndrome now. In that case, it is too soon for the practitioners of psychology to be offering bogus diagnoses and treatments for a condition that hasn't been studied well enough to determine what it is, what causes it, and what can be done about it. If psychology were a science, its practitioners would be studying Asperger's in laboratories, rather than telling parents their children have it on slim to nonexistent grounds. Maybe Asperger`s syndrome is just a societal misuse of psychology and is not a diagnosis. Who knows? Honest to God. "Who knows?" is not a scientific question and you are no longer addressing anything resembling the topic. In fact it is clear you don't have a coherent position, and I've let you ramble on too long.

To address scientific questions, you must understand science, and you very clearly do not. As many correspondents have done, you have abandoned any pretense of addressing the original question "Is Psychology a Science?" and proceeded to defend psychology as a non-science.

No one seems to be getting this, so I will say it again. I am not criticizing clinical psychology for what it is, but because of what it falsely pretends to be: a science.

Clinical psychology cannot bear its present burden of responsibility as a science, because it is not a science. Those who think otherwise generally fall into the category of people not qualified to distinguish science from superstition.

This correspondent, a psychology Ph.D., replied to this exchange a total of nine times (without benefit of replies from me), revealing among other things his ignorance of the distinction between correlation and causation (of the "she had therapy, and she got better!" variety). His messages gradually decreased in logical content and increased in hostility, until I finally and reluctantly barred him from this site. In other words, it was an exchange with which I am all too familiar, between someone who thinks a certain way and someone who feels a certain way.

From a self-identified psychology Ph.D.:

Science is a method and those who use it are scientists.

Very misleading. This is like saying people who breathe are all pulmonary specialists. Pulmonary specialists also breathe, but breathing is not limited to them.

In point of fact, science is the moral property of all thinking people. It is not the private domain of scientists, and science is not a priestly order.

You, like many, take pot shots,

Prove it. Use evidence. That way, your ignorance of science will immediately become apparent.

make eclectic complaints to suit your own purposes.

Same reply. Your message contains no evidence to support its claims, therefore you are reduced to posting contentless arguments.

When I directly quote the head of research for DSM-IV [the "Bible" of clinical psychology] as he criticizes clinical psychologists' lack of intellectual rigor, does that count as an "eclectic complaint" to suit my own purposes?

By your reasoning astronomy is not a "hard" science.

That is your "reasoning," not mine, and you offer no evidence to support it. Also, you simply got this wrong — the original objection was made against cosmology, not astronomy. Astronomy is well-supported by observational evidence.

By the way, it stems from astrology.

Only in the same way that chestnut horses stem from horse chestnuts. In point of fact, astronomy does not "stem" from astrology, it contradicts it.

You do not stick to your own task ...

Prove this using reason and evidence.

...if you did you would have to conclude that psychology is a science,

No, as a matter of fact, clinical psychology is not a science, something that honest psychologists readily acknowledge.

many other scientists agree

"Many other scientists"? This "argument" of yours argues from authority rather than evidence, a logical gaffe that first-year science students are taught to avoid.

and include it's findings in their knowledge base.

Non sequitur. The ravings of lunatics are included in someone's scientific data base, but this doesn't make the ravings scientific.

There is much I find wrong with psychology (especially those who practice it)none--the-less it is a science

Prove it using the methods of science. I know you are manifestly unqualified to accomplish this, but as a matter of principle you need to realize you cannot defend any of your claims.

and you, with your extroidinary claims

1. Hmm. Another psychology Ph.D. who cannot spell "extraordinary".

2. The claims I make are gleaned from the rich technical literature on this topic, claims demonstrated in many studies both inside and outside the field of clinical psychology, and I provide a reference list with my article for those who care to examine the original evidence.

would be on the defensive when taking this position.

"Would be"? I presented the position, and then I defended it using the standard evidence, evidence that is part of technical and legal literature. I am hardly the only scientist to make this determination, as you would know if you bothered to educate yourself on this topic.

Better evidence is needed.

Since you are ignorant of the existing evidence, you are not qualified to make this statement. Better evidence is welcome, but the existing evidence is excellent.

To support your idea you would need to take on some of the contributions by psychology that have been accepted in the sciences

There are few such contributions. Science has strict evidentiary rules that clinical psychology cannot meet (as does law). The "contributions" you describe primarily represent raw data, not finished theories. If science studies UFO abduction stories, does that make the stories scientific?

and then show that all these other scientists were wrong

"All these other scientists." You are again arguing from authority rather than evidence, an embarrassing beginner's gaffe. Science is not a popularity contest, it is a field where evidence means everything and authority means nothing. The largest amount of scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific evidence.

When Nobel Prizewinner Linus Pauling touted the virtues of vitamin C against the common cold, scientists said, "Show us the evidence," just as though he were a student. That is how science works.

-- an insurmountable task.

To engage in a scientific debate, you must understand how science works, and you do not. According to your arguments, you think science is kind of a popularity contest where scientists vote for ideas they think are cool.

Your message contains no scientific reasoning or evidence of any kind. Instead, it relies on hand-waving arguments like "all these other scientists", arguments that would be rejected by first-year science students because they represent one or another elementary logical error.

In other words, you are a typical psychologist. Rather than being part of the solution, you are part of the problem. If you expected to make a positive contribution to an embarrassing field, you would first have to learn how science works.

This correspondent replied, explaining that my use of scientific reasoning was a "preference," as though there were any number of equally valid ways to process the question under discussion. He said, not once but several times, "If you prefer to use scientific reasoning to argue then use the methods of science." He then proceeded to abandon those methods.

It was while reading his reply that I recognized the problem: this correspondent is a post-modernist, that is to say, someone who believes there are no objective facts or methods to establish facts. To a post-modernist, there is only opinion, and everyone has one.

In other words, if you say psychology is a science, then it is, but if you say it isn't, then it isn't. Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, with individuals like these representing psychology's interests, it isn't.

From a practicing psychotherapist:

First, a little introduction. I do not usually belabour my qualifications so, but it seems that although you reject argumentum ad autoritatem, you are inclined to view responses from those with qualifications in psychology as suspect. No, I regard an appeal to authority as suspect, as all scientists do. You have just made your first misstep.
[ List of qualifications deleted ] Now to the substance of this reply: Your article ends with a condemnation of psychology in general terms and with the more specific statement that "psychology and psychiatry have never been based in science." That claim is demonstrably false. I am perpetually amazed by scientific illiterates who think a phrase like "demonstrably false" might be a suitable way to end a conversation, when in point of fact, among scientists it can only begin one. Here is the evidence that you are wrong:

Clinical psychology is not based in science, for the reason that it does not possess the primary trait that sets scientific theories apart from ordinary activities, that of falsifiability.

Without explicit, testable theoretical statements, there can be no tests. Without tests, there can be no possibility of falsification. Without falsification, there can be no basis for rejecting anything anyone cares to say. That is the present status of clinical psychology. That is why psychological theories come and go over time without any of them being explicitly proven false.

To avoid a long and pointless discussion, I ask that you learn what science is before trying to go on.

Freud listened credulously to the reports of his female patients as though they were reports of fact, until one of his friends was accused of improper sexual behavior. Then he invented "female hysteria" as a blanket explanation for all such reports from women. He could do this because what he practiced was not a science. It is still not a science. To reach this conclusion, you establish a standard that is of questionable value to anyone wishing to assess the intellectual and scientific standing of psychology, or its possible utility to them. Translation: "According to my definition of science, clinical psychology is a science." This is an example of post-modernism, and post-modernism is something you need to guard against, along with all the classical logical errors.

There is a single definition of science, one on which all scientists agree. You are correct that clinical psychology is not a science in the sense that physics is. As you point out, neither are many medical fields, nor are astronomy and astrophysics, much of earth science, nor any other field that must rely mainly or even partially on observation rather than on controlled experiment. These statements are false, and your attempt to assign them to me shows that you need to read more carefully. I never took the positions you are trying to attribute to me.

Observation can be a valid form of evidence, unless the things being observed are self-reporting human subjects. For example, George Gamow calculated and predicted a small microwave signature in support of the Big Bang theory. The microwave signature was then observed (and Mr. Gamow's views and biases became irrelevant). There is still no better explanation for this signature than the Big Bang, but if an explanation should be offered that explains and predicts more, the Big Bang will be discarded.

When dealing with human subjects, simply observing without any controls in place (and without any basis for shaping scientific theories) leads to the present state of clinical psychology — a logical free-fire zone, one in which anyone can say anything, and one in which people are regularly jailed on the basis of bogus expert testimony.

People are not thrown in jail on the strength of the opinions of astronomers. These are interesting issues, and worth discussing, but in your argument they are used to foreclose rather than broaden the consideration of the scientific bases of psychology. In my argument, the points you have posted are not present, I never made them, and I do not agree with them. They are false.

You are really off to a good start. And that last is exactly the subject of your final claim — that not only is psychology not a precise science of controlled experiment like physics (granted), it further has no scientific basis whatever and instead has the status of a faith. The practice of clinical psychology is based on faith, not evidence. Many years ago, homosexuality was added to the DSM [ the "Bible" of clinical psychology ] based on ... evidence? No, based on a popular belief — that's belief — that it is a disease amenable to psychological treatment. There was no evidence whatever to support this belief, but that didn't stop the editors of the DSM.

Later, homosexuality was removed from the DSM, based on ... evidence? No, based on popular sentiment and political pressure that it didn't belong there. There is still no firm scientific evidence one way or the other, but it seems not to be either treatable or a disease — according to popular sentiment, and the failure of treatment methods.

Imagine something like gravity being removed from physics based on political pressure. It could not happen, because physics is a science. It did happen in clinical psychology, because clinical psychology is not a science.

In the meantime, many homosexuals paid the price for the false belief that clinical psychology is a science. (In passing, I'll observe that mathematics is not a science either, contrary to your claim in one of your replies to replies...) Mathematics is the queen of all sciences. It is the most rigorous of all sciences, and it is governed by evidence and proof to a greater degree than any of the other sciences. Indeed, it is the foundation on which modern physics, which you acknowledge to be a science, is built.

Physics is a science because mathematics is a science. Were the latter not true, the former would not be true either, and you have just shot yourself in the foot. Mathematics is a formal logic game, resting on untested (and untestable) principles of representation and meaning (e.g., the notion of symbol), logic and deduction (e.g., syllogism), definition (e.g., set). Okay, now I have the picture. You very simply do not have any idea what you are talking about. Current clinical psychology is indeed based in science... As I expected, you are now waving your hands in the air, and you continue to do so. Have a nice day.

This correspondent proceeded to list examples of psychological experiments, hoping through this list to show that there is science taking place. I was reminded of Richard Feynman's famous "Cargo Cult Science" anecdote, in which people who want the status of science expect to be able to imitate scientific procedures while ignoring the essence of science — that of creating a testable theoretical foundation, objectively comparing the theory to reality, and most importantly, accepting that a failure of this reality test requires the abandonment of the theory, a process that virtually never happens in clinical psychology.

In this writer's effort to dismiss mathematics as an onanistic pursuit, he wildly distorts the meaning of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, assuming he knows the name. I have noticed that writers objecting to my article feel it necessary to demonstrate their knowledge of scientific topics, but in doing so, end up demonstrating the opposite. On reading my reply, this writer abandoned the topic and tried to paint science as a religion. This brought to mind the old saying "to a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

My name is [ ... ]. I am [ ... ] years of age and finishing my [ ... ] year of the [ ... ] at the University of [ ... ].

I must admit, I am a fan of your "Is Psychology a Science?" article. So much so, that I have relayed it to one of my professors. It will be required reading for this term's Psychology [ ... ] Neuroscience (a senior undergraduate seminar). We will be discussing it in next week's seminar. I am honored that my article has caught your interest and become part of your curriculum. I hope the exercise and discussion is a productive one, and I am interested to hear any feedback you care to provide.

Although the article is not crystal clear on this point, it examines the relationship between clinical and theoretical psychology, e.g. the fact that the latter seems to have little effect on the former. I say this because, although the topic of the article is apparent to a nonspecialist, it may not seem specific enough to someone in the field.

Well, my friend, it was quite the experience. Since the course was filled with art students (I put the psychology ones in there as well, though the BSc ones would argue quite to the contrary), I had little time to do any of the usual readings for our seminar, with the exception of yours, since I am in science and had little time throughout the semester. Nevertheless, the professor was so impressed with the debate at the end of the semester with the class, he decided to pass me.

It was academic Thermopylae, only the Greeks actually won this time. The entire class and the professor piled on top of me. Your arguments, combined with my own, were sufficient for the distribution of one plate of ass after the next. Everyone was pleased at the end, so much so, they bought two pitchers. I took it a little further though and argued that the entire field of Psychology was all nonsense. The professor, also a skeptic, was pleased.

This is all very unusual for a place like [ ... ], where the Department of Psychology is a popular destination for youth with no desire whatsoever to attempt any of the actual sciences that require some discipline and real world constraints imposed by the universe. Many of the students were quite angry since they had all spent thousands of dollars in their program thus far and were making final preparations for graduation. I wish I had been there! I wonder how often such a debate happens in academia, among people freshly trained to think critically, out of sight of those who need psychology to be true.

As a science student you may take this sort of outcome for granted, since the debate necessarily pivoted on evidence rather than passion, but it is only recently that psychology has begun to be examined in this forthright way. Thank you for keeping me in the loop, and for having an open mind.

I am a nursing student (also a quasi-science, quite to my dismay), and I wanted to go into clinical psychology. I, being skeptical, googled "psychology & science" and found your wonderful article.

I have two questions. Please understand I am not attempting to challenge you, I am asking questions from a nieve stance, with the expectiation on being enlightened by your responces. Here are my questions:

1) Is "all" of psychology non-scientific? I find this hard to believe, as some branches use controlled experiments in every test, which are "repeatable" ... First, repeatability is not enough to assure that a field is scientific. Astrologers always get the same result when they cast a chart for a given birthdate, but that doesn't make the chart scientific.

Second, it is important to understand that if an experiment meant to test a scientific theory is conducted and it fails, it must invalidate the theory that led to the test. If this falsifiability criterion is not met, the theory is not scientific.

Sometimes experiments are conducted in psychology, but they generally do not stand as tests of theory, and when they fail, they generally do not invalidate any theory. In a truly scientific field, it is not a matter of sometimes, but always — all theories are testable, and all experimental failures invalidate the theory that led to the test. Scientists don't get to pick and choose which experiments they consider important.

So, even though there are experiments in psychology, they don't have the effect of invalidating some practitioner's pet theory about the human mind in any consistent way. Consequently, psychology's clients are utterly subject to the whim of clinical psychologists, who don't really care whether what they are doing has been tested scientifically.

That is the answer to your question. If psychology ever becomes scientific, there will be a clear connection between theory, feasible experiments that must not fail, and clinical practice. This is simply not how modern psychology works. which brings me to question 2)

2) If there are studies from psychology which refute the "theories" of psychology, isn't this, then, science? No, for the simple reason that the refutations don't stop the practice. There are any number of cases where a psychological theory has been refuted, but this has no effect whatsoever on clinical practice, which just goes on as though nothing happened.

Examples. There are clinicians still practicing "recovered memory therapy" and "facilitated communication therapy", after both fields have been thoroughly discredited in what pass for "experiments" in the field of psychology. But because people want to believe in them, they are still practiced, contrary to evidence that has discredited both practices. Science is about finding out what "reality is not", correct? No, that is not correct. The reason you do not know what distinguishes a scientific theory from an ordinary belief is because you are in a course of training for a field that is not scientific, a field where people feel free to say absolutely anything. I have heard several psychologists talk about studies that shred the credibility (and reliability) of the DSM-4 also ... but this is what makes science, "science", right? No, it is not. In order for the DSM to have scientific standing, it would have to spring from an internally consistent theory that proposes feasible tests, and if the tests failed, the DSM would be thrown out. Having professors tear the DSM apart, with no effect on clinical practice and without reference to a core theory, only shows that psychology is not a scientific undertaking.

In scientific fields, there is a core of theory to which everything else refers. If experiments disprove the theory, the entire field must necessarily fall apart. When experiments disproved the ether theory of the late 19th century, physics was in limbo (without a valid theoretical core) until Einstein produced a new, testable theory that explained the earlier experimental failure and proposed new tests that, if they had failed, would have invalidated his theory as well. No one took Einstein seriously until his proposed experiments (starting in 1919 and extending through the 1960s) confirmed his predictions. Until then, Einstein's "theory" was a mere "hypothesis".

That is how science works. In psychology, by contrast, clinicians start a new fad, and unless and until they are sued, they continue to practice it (as in the fad that killed Candace Newmaker). There is no core theory, and there are no proposed experiments that, if they fail, invalidate the nonexistent theory.

Look at each major change in psychological practice starting with Freud, moving through Bruno Bettelheim falsely blaming mothers for their children's autism, to the present, and you will see a history of whimsy followed by cocktail chatter, instead of theory followed by experiment. An additional question for you: How else, in your opinion, can we find out about abnormal human conditions and their treatments? There is no ethical way to study human behavior with the kinds of controls that would be required to produce meaningful results. And sweeping that restriction aside would be a necessary but not sufficient precondition for meaningful study. Many more systematic difficulties remain — most are listed in my paper.

The main reasons psychology is not a scientific field are that (1) it is not ethical to carry out the kinds of experiments that would be required to produce decent science, and (2) if this were not true, if somehow this restriction were to be lifted, most of the people presently in the field would turn out to be unqualified to do science.

It is not an accident that a psychology degree is almost entirely worthless in the real world. It is one of the easiest degrees to acquire, but then it is nearly impossible to turn the degree into meaningful employment.

A psychology degree ranks slightly higher than a philosophy degree (the latter a certain guarantee of unemployment), but it ranks below nearly any other degree available from an institution of higher learning. And only the most candid of counselors are willing to tell you this.

I'm a psychology student, very humble and junior in my approach and certainly won't question your views strongly.

I'm due to write a paper on the debate of psychology and science and have got a great deal out of your arguments, which give me the ability to look at psychology from another angle.

Can I ask you however, what your thoughts are on behavioural psychology such as that developed by Watson, Skinner and the likes and the methods of approach used in this case. Due to it being something that can be seen/observed and henced reasonably predictable, would you see this as scientific? Not remotely. If not, please tell me why. 1. A scientific study that involves human subjects must distinguish between what a person reports and that person's actual subjective state. This is called the "self-reporting" problem.

2. The self-reporting problem might be solved by creating a control group, but this is almost never done for some practical and basic ethical reasons. Without a control group, psychological studies cannot be taken seriously as evidence of anything more than a person applying his opinions to a set of subjects. This, by the way, explains why any number of professional advocates for different outlooks can find "support" for their views independent of each other, and of reality.

Example. Let's say a psychologist wants to prove that his method is efficacious in preventing teenage suicide. In order to rise to the level of science, there would have to be a control group who received a plausible placebo talk therapy, alongside the group receiving the real thing.

Let's say the control group has twice as many teenage suicides as the experimental group. Do you see what this would mean? Apart from the extreme unlikelihood that the experimenter and subjects in the control group would not realize they were the control group (which would ruin the science), there are very serious ethical issues here in withholding treatment from the control group, as well as deceiving the control subjects about what was taking place, e.g. research instead of therapy.

For these and other reasons and to be perfectly blunt, one cannot do science in human clinical psychology. One can do pseudo-science, but one cannot do science. Ethics and problems of meaningful experimental design prevent it.

If you study pigeons or rats, then yes, you can do research and try to extrapolate the result to humans, because pigeons have no rights. But as to direct human study, no, one simply cannot do it. This is why clinical psychology has evolved into a loose collection of fads whose popularity varies with public taste rather than scientific evidence. And these fads are not harmless — patients die. Google for "Candace Newmaker" for an example of a child killed by a fad therapy. There are many similar cases, this one is particularly dramatic.

In a more recent story involving the death of a child, authorities are charging the parents of a young girl with deliberately poisoning her with drugs that were diagnosed by a psychiatrist. More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/us/15bipolar.html

This story shows how aggressive marketing of drugs by big pharmaceutical companies can lead to tragedy, as well as showing the very poor connection between clinical psychology and scientific evidence.

Very frankly, it is nearly impossible to read current literature in clinical psychology and not see it as a system that is completely out of control, unregulated by science or common sense.

This is part of an exchange on a different topic.

A note about the note on credentials: In science anything which is said must have a basis (but as you say, not in the paper credential of the one who says it). If I write a paper on fruitfly sex, I must first establish from prior knowledge/research a basis for writing. No, this is wrong. What you must do is have the evidence. If you have the evidence, and if it is repeatable by others, your credentials don't matter. If you don't have the evidence, your credentials don't matter again. Or, to say it simply, the greatest amount of scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific evidence. I don't argue the "trump" issue at all, but my point here is that you also have to have a basis. No, evidence is all there is. A total greenhorn might hit upon a breakthrough, and that breakthrough must be tested on the evidence, not on the reputation of the originator or a thorough reading of prior work. Example, Einstein and relativity. Who would want to listen to a Swiss patent clerk? Answer: a scientist. However, that basis is prior research/knowledge, not your "credentials" as you're using the term. All such issues turn on the theory and its evidence, not at all in a track record. Example Wegener, a meteorologist, who proposed that the continents were drifting around, several decades before that could be shown by observational evidence. The fact that he was a meteorologist (not a geologist) hurt his acceptance among all but scientists, who waited for evidence (and eventually got it). I don't disagree at all that the trump is still the evidence for your contention, but the background support, the basis, the prior research, is part of that evidence. This is a first-class logical error named "argumentum ad verecundiam" (argument from authority). It is warned against in the first year of a scientist's training. It is always an error to examine anything but the present evidence for a proposition. Your experience in the field, for instance, gives you the knowledge base from which to make the statements you're making. No, it doesn't. I am a seventh-grade dropout. If science were not arranged as it is, I would be totally unqualified to make the statements I am making. In point of fact, when the Oregon Academy of Science named me "Scientist of the Year" in 1986, they did it based solely on my work, not on what credentials I had. That is because the Academy is composed of scientists, people who know which side of the bread the butter is on. I guess the teacher's point (as I read it) and mine is that it's not always easy to judge the content without the background (knowledge of the speaker or of the hearer). Again, this emphasis on background is always an error, a first-class mistake that all scientists are warned against early in their training. Again, in a research paper, one starts with a review of what others have found. This is optional and it doesn't have the meaning you're attaching to it. References to the work of others may or may not be present, but if they are present, they exist solely to add to the corpus of evidence, not to lean on the reputation of the researchers who created it, or on the sheer weight of work supporting a particular viewpoint. And the paper might then go on to completely contradict the prior evidence citations — that is common. This was drilled into me in my research methodology class, where the instructor basically said that a researcher is not allowed to say anything original — My God. The majority of scientific breakthroughs throughout history arose from someone totally "unqualified", speaking out of class, saying something entirely original and with no basis in prior work. Galileo. Newton. Darwin. Einstein. Wegener. Each of these examples is of someone who did not have a conventional basis for speaking up at all, and who contradicted the prevailing wisdom, and who was eventually shown to have a valid basis for speaking. What she actually said is that you can't state a hypothesis (you can't HAVE a hypothesis) without deriving it from prior findings, This is totally, completely, false. You have been misled by a miseducated teacher. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. It is quite false. Einstein's view of the universe utterly contradicted all prior work and common sense, as did the later quantum theory. Both these theories won acceptance on the basis of evidence, not agreement with precedent.

You may be confusing science with law, where precedent is central, as is authority. There is no authority in science, only evidence. So in other words, one cannot start a research project without a thorough review of prior work. That is a different point. To read prior work is not to require it for your own — you may well intend to contradict it. And that prior work is the support for the hypothesis and part of the support for the new findings/arguments. That is entirely false. Relativity contradicted the prevailing ether theory, which had stood since Newton's time as an explanation for various phenomena, and that lay at the heart of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. But this didn't stop Einstein, the patent clerk, and in due time (based on observational evidence) his entirely original scientific theory overthrew all of physics. This is just one example among many. So, the teacher asked (I assume), "What is this guy's 'prior knowledge' by which he supports his contentions? And by so doing, the teacher reveals her lack of understanding of how ideas and theories are shaped in the realm of science.

[ in a section about Linus Pauling's contention that Vitamin C could treat the common cold ]

2 problems with Dr. Pauling's Vitamin C arguments: 1. (As you said) evidence isn't there. 2. His expertise was not in that area, On the contrary, he was a world-renowned, Nobel Prizewinning microbiologist. He was in principle in a perfect position to make the claim. He just couldn't come up with any evidence. And your challenge here tends, I think, to support what I've said. Not at all. Scientists reacted to Pauling's theory by asking "Where's the evidence?" There was none, and the idea died. The fact that the idea originated with a world-renowned, Nobel-Prizewinning scientist made no difference at all. I know Pauling was a Nobel winner, but I know nothing about his field. Even so, I concluded it had nothing to do with Vitamin C, and said so; you've called me on my "lack of credentials". No, I used this as an example where the lack of evidence ruled the issue. Credentials mean nothing. I am not a scientist, unless you accept that psychology is a science — which is where I learned scientific methodology; But psychology isn't a science. It pretends to be a science, and I now understand how it was that your "science" instructor was so misguided. I have been having a running debate with psychologists for several years now on this topic (not that this is an open question among scientists, only among psychologists). There are still some psychologists who think psychology is a science, against all evidence to the contrary.

Many skilled, experienced psychologists come to recognize that psychology is not a science, but just as many newly minted graduates, especially from the less disciplined schools, need to learn this the hard way, hopefully without being sued or jailed:

"Psychiatrist Won't Practice Medicine After Girl's Death", an account of the death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley while under a psychiatrist's care.
"Victim of Attachment Therapy", an account of the death of 10-year-old Candace Newmaker while undergoing "rebirthing" therapy.

Many psychologists respond to my paper by asking, "Are you a psychologist? You can't debate the status of psychology unless you are", people who, by falling into this logical error, ironically support the position that psychology is not a science. I don't know a lot about the "hard sciences", and specifically don't know how microbiology relates to Vitamin C. Easy answer: without evidence, it doesn't.

I am getting a lot of this kind of self-referential inquiry lately — in essence, "What authority do you have to criticize psychology?"

Mr.? Dr.? Lutus, Since you think titles matter, I can anticipate what kind of post this will be. I think it would be helpful if somewhere on your site you included a link to some biographical information about yourself. I'm doing a research paper arguing that psychology is not a science and was looking to find you're occupation and degree to judge reliability. Really? Do you think the reliability of evidence depends on its source? If you are being taught this, you need to change professors or schools, because you are being tricked into a well-established logical error named "argumentum ad verecundiam."

Scientific evidence must stand on its own. It cannot be judged based on its source. If this were not true, Albert Einstein would have died a lowly patent clerk, rather than as someone who overthrew much of what we thought we knew about physics. He did this using evidence, not authority.

And this principle cuts both ways. When Nobel Prizewinner Linus Pauling claimed that vitamin C might cure the common cold, scientists asked to see the evidence. His standing in the world of science mattered not at all. If he had been a graduate student, the evidence would have been the only factor in judging his ideas. And as a Nobel Prizewinner, evidence was still the only factor.

Another example. Late in his life, Nobel Prizewinner William Shockley traveled about lecturing on the supposed intellectual inferiority of African-Americans. If the assumptions behind your inquiry were valid, his status would have lent weight to his racist ideas. But intelligent, educated people judged that issue based on evidence alone. You should do the same. In science, evidence means everything, reputation means nothing. The greatest amount of scientific eminence is trumped by the smallest amount of scientific evidence. If you've already included that information, please point me in the right direction. I think I have done just that. If you think otherwise, you need to ask yourself whether you are being educated in the principles of science, or being told what to think by people who believe authority trumps evidence.

As a psychologist (PhD) I have to agree with much of your assessment of the lack of science in the practices and theories of clinical psychologists. But I do take exception with one part...if I have understood it correctly.

You seem to indicate that psychology...because it studies humans...can not be a science because you can not do certain things to humans that you can do to animals (though animal rights people make sure that they are protected). That's true, and it represents an ethical limitation that cannot be circumvented, no matter the potential reward. A scientific field is one which uses scientific methods. No, that is false. A scientific field must do much more than simply use scientific methods. It must create falsifiable theories, and it must be willing to abandon falsified theories.

Anyone can use scientific methods, but without necessarily taking some additional steps required to create true science. Astrologers use scientific methods, but because some essential pieces are missing, astrology isn't a science.

Advocates of "Intelligent Design" use scientific methods, but because they begin research with a preconceived idea of what is to be "discovered," and because they won't allow the evidence to lead them to any other conclusion, the process is not a scientific one. In the middle of the last century...Richard Feynman...the Nobel laureate physicist...spoke of psychology as a science. This is simply untrue. In a now-famous article titled "Cargo Cult Science," Feynman explains that some "sciences" go through the motions without honoring the substance, and he was thinking of psychology among other fields. In fact, his position corresponded to what I have just said about form versus substance.

There are a handful of requirements for true science, and falsifiability tops the list. Unless a field creates falsifiable theories, unless the theories lead to practical experiments, unless the experiments are able to potentially falsify the theory, unless the field's practitioners accept the outcome of experiments, the field is not scientific. Psychology was founded as a science... Yes, as I point out in my article, but that was a goal, an unrealized intention. ... its first general instrument was the IQ test and even clinical psychology students had to demonstrate a high level capability of scientific experimental ability before they could get a PhD. Those two points are in direct contradiction. I.Q. testing has never been remotely scientific. Psychologist R. M. Yerkes infamously abused I.Q. testing to accomplish personal racist goals, with far-reaching consequences for Jews and other groups. In "The Mismeasure of Man," Steven Jay Gould adroitly exposes the many abuses of I.Q. testing, up to the present day. Did you really mean to join those two points in that way? Not so any more. You can now get a PsyD. if you are science allergic. I seem to hear from a lot of these recent graduates. Many of them think the field is scientific, based on outward appearances. What you describe...fairly accurately...is what clinical psychology has become. That is different than saying it never was...and never could be...scientific in its approach. It never was scientific. An intention is not a reality. The aspirations of its founders collided with the reality that human ethics prevents the sort of clinical evaluations that would be required to produce useful scientific evidence. And I am not complaining, let me make clear. The kinds of studies that would be required are rightly forbidden. The current Code of Ethics for Psychologists says at Standard 2.04; Psychologists work is based upon established scientific knowledge of the discipline. And psychologists don't violate this standard, for the reason that there is no "established scientific knowledge" in the field. If there was, recovered memory therapy would never have gotten off the ground. Freudian analysis would have been stillborn. Facilitated communication would have been recognized for what it was — a sham meant to appeal to unsophisticated, desperate parents.

Each of these practices would have been tested scientifically before getting to the clinical level, and each of them would have been cast out, instead of having to be abandoned only after much legal wrangling. Plain and simple. (That immediately rules out DSM and all of its progeny). And if psychology were truly scientific, the DSM would be cast out on a number of grounds. But clinical psychology allied itself with the wholly imaginary...unscientific in the extreme...DSM and its various editions. That is...they have abdicated from science. This is not just an academic point. By doing so they have created an ethical issue that the public could use legally. Anyone jailed...or incarcerated...or who could not get a job because of a DSM diagnosis of disorder can cite the text of the Code of Ethics...and the statement by the American Psychiatric Association at www.dsm5.org/planning.cfm that the scientific basis of the disorders may never be uncovered.

(What could the scientific basis of sibling rivalry be anyway? Actually, I would have wondered what a clinical psychologist would expect to be able to do about it, or whether it presents something abnormal or treatable. The DSM-IV is at times a pretty funny book...except the world takes it as truth). Including a lot of very serious clinicians. Also...in the DSM-III the psychiatrists...who have never claimed to be scientists... Actually, Freud originally intended to build psychiatry as a science of mind. So much for good intentions. ...did an interrater reliability study which showed that there was little agreement between clinicians independently diagnosing from the same set of facts. And the head of research for DSM-IV points out that clinicians tend to create diagnoses for the conditions they want to treat regardless of the facts, which makes the same point (no diagnostic consistency). That is...the disorder categories have neither validity nor reliability...necessary prerequisites for a scientific psychological procedure or test.

So my disagreement with you is that psychology is a scientific endeavor but clinical psychologists...notoriously research aversive...have abdicated to join psychiatry. You are missing a crucial point. If psychology were scientific, the theoretical side of the field would invalidate the clinical practice, using firm principles. But there are no firm principles, no clear theoretical laws.

If an engineer builds a bridge and the bridge collapses, an investigation will reveal the violation of a well-established law that is part of physics, and the error will not be repeated.

If a clinical psychologist induces a bogus recovered memory of sexual abuse and someone goes to jail, which psychological law exists to correct the injustice and prevent a recurrence?

You need to recognize that psychology is all of a piece, and the theoretical side cannot govern the clinical side for lack of coherent, unifying theoretical principles. Otherwise...I wish there were more articles like yours...especially from psychologists. If a psychologist had the training required to detect the absence of hard science, he wouldn't enter the field. Psychologists are largely self-selected to ignore the condition of the field. Thanks for writing.

I agree with your comments that psychology is the new age religion. However, it is a bold statement to make the claim the psychology is for people that are too smart for religion, implying that people of faith are stupid. But that is an established fact. Religious people are not as intelligent or accomplished as those who see through religion. This is a scientific finding, and the evidence is presented in my article On Believing.

The proof is overwhelming and ubiquitous. For example: Creation itself proves that a creator is necessary, just as a painting demands that there was someone to paint it. Nonsense. To make the argument that a creator is necessary for everything requires us to follow the logic to its inescapable conclusion and ask who created God, and who created that creator, ad infinitum. But religious people are too ignorant or cowardly to apply logic to their own belief system. Religious people are typically self-selected airheads who couldn't reason their way out of a wet paper bag.

And claiming that God doesn't need a creator changes only the form of the argument, not the result — if God doesn't require a designer, then we don't either.

It's possible to generate extremely complex systems by simply providing the raw materials, some energy, and an environment with limitations to filter out failed designs. This is a standard laboratory exercise in computer science and biology, and nature has her own demonstrations ... like us. It is easy to fall into the delusion that we create the world that is around us ... This is called a "false choice," and the concept of the false choice is presented in an educated person's freshman year. It is not a choice between God and man as creators of the universe. It is a choice between our knowing, and not knowing, how the universe came into being. We don't know. Religious con men try to claim they know God personally and will happily tell you what He told them — for a small fee, of course. ... and, if we are truthful, the core of that delusion is pride and extreme self love. Accepting the fact that we don't know how the universe came into being is certainly not a reason to be smug. The false choice between humans and God as creators of the universe only shows the shallowness of religious thinking.

Rational, educated people, when confronted by something we don't know, are able to say "We don't know." Narcissists and religious believers go looking for an unimpeachable external authority to give them the level of certainty required to, say, fly an airliner into a building full of infidels. Consistencies in human behavior as shown by our conscious show that there is a basic right and wrong, There is no "basic right and wrong." That is a myth. We choose the rules by which be live, and morals are based on human choices, not divine law. Once it was moral to own slaves, now that is immoral. It was once moral to treat women as second-class citizens, now that is immoral. Sometimes it is moral to kill, for example unbelievers, sometimes not. Religious leaders decreed it immoral to read Galileo's books or look through telescopes, but eventually people realized he was right, so it's OK now. We choose our morals, then some con artists try to claim divine inspiration for them, a scam that only works on the weak-minded.

The most dangerous organism on Planet Earth is a religious believer who cannot think for himself, cannot make rational choices based on evidence. The attack on the World Trade Center proved that, as though any further proof was needed. it is the signature of God that stands and testifies against us. Imagine being in a world where you have to make your own choices and accept personal responsibility for the consequences. Guess what? This is that world. We have all violated what our conscious (or the law of our heart) has pointed to as being right, we have all fallen short of what our Creator has intended us to be. So God talks to you? After you take your medication, does He continue to tell you what to do, or does He fall silent? This is a statement of fact and begs that we are in need of redemption from this corrupted state. The "corrupted state" is called ignorance. Education is the cure, rather than following the advice of some failed used car salesman. Though psychology has a branch that is dedicated to diagnosing abnormalities it also does its fair share of justifying a person's reactions to their environments. Yes, and that is why clinical psychology has become another religion. Clinical psychology has a model for mental health — for "normal behavior" — hidden within it, but there is no single model for "normal" in an ever-changing world. In today's world, avoiding rigid religious beliefs has critical survival value. It is our way of justifying what we do as correct in the face of our own heart testifying against us. I am sure the 9/11 terrorists were each sincerely following their hearts. Once you fall short of 100% you can never attain that state again, and when one holds us accountable for our own thoughts we are all guilty. It appears you're a Catholic. It's sometimes possible to identify which set of moronic ideas a religious person is held hostage by, and correlate that with a particular sect.

But in a more fundamental way all religions are the same, and they require an astonishing level of stupidity to prevail against everyday reality. This necessitates something else that is higher than us to redeem us, and it cannot be done through ourselves. This is why God (Jesus) died for our sins, Honest to God (no pun intended). In the midst of your intellectual bankruptcy, you don't even know your theology. God and Jesus aren't the same thing.

This is astonishing. You don't even know the specifics of the myth by which you are held hostage. to address the issue of our failure and to restore us. Psychology attempts to draw a maze of thought around the our problems, never relating to the central issue. The central issue is human stupidity. Pearls are considered to have value, produced from the continual wrapping of the oyster shell. Clinical psychology produces similar results, yet we forget that at the center of all those layers there was an irritation that has not been removed. I agree, and education is the cure — for those willing to recognize its value.

Hi, This morning I stumbled on to your website, and read a few of your articles on psychology. I've taken several low level courses in it (and plan to take more), but really, I can't say that I completely disagree with you completely. In fact, it is making me question the future of my education. I think your timing is good, better than most. Many people don't consider the course of their education until the last moment they could change direction has passed. I noticed a few of the problems you have outlined. I've always dismissed them however, as being the result of (to be frank) a lot of incompetents damaging an otherwise promising field. There's some truth in that, but I ask that you think more deeply about this. Why doesn't the presence of incompetents injure physics or mathematics in the same way? The answer is that physics and mathematics are sciences, where claims must be accompanied by evidence.

There are incompetents in every field — in fact, science was invented to weed out incompetents through a strict process for evaluating facts and theories. Remember that science is not facts and theories, it is a way to evaluate facts and theories. In science, evidence is all there is — nothing else matters. On the other hand you appear to think the entire field is completely beyond redemption, something that needs to just be chucked into the woodpile. I wouldn't say that. In fact, I didn't say that. If I said that about psychology, I would have to say it about astrology, too. But there are a lot of weak-minded people out there who think astrology is real. Do I have the right to deprive people of their sad attachment to astrology, just because it is nonsense? That would be like laughing at a handicapped person in the street — it would be uncivilized and unkind.

Out of pity and compassion, I prefer not to do that to astrology or its followers, in particular because no one with an ounce of sense takes astrology seriously. The same cannot be said about psychology, and that is where the danger lies — psychologists make claims about the scientific standing of psychology that are simply false.

Scientists who read the psychology literature, who notice the weak to nonexistent experimental standards, the indifference to new evidence or a lack of evidence, are prone to dismiss psychology in its present form. But scientists who work in large academic institutions are pressured (and I know about this from firsthand experience) not to criticize psychology too harshly because it is a way for the university to make a huge amount of money from undisciplined students with little future potential, who want to take the easiest possible courses.

There are a few poorly kept secrets in academia. One is that college athletics makes so much money that universities tolerate the presence of "students" who are nothing of the kind. Another is that psychology, sociology and a handful of other disciplines are tolerated because they greatly increase the size of the student body, beyond the core student population who are actually seeking an education and who will become tomorrow's leaders.

In the old days, attending college was a privilege extended only to the most qualified students (and wrongly denied to fully qualified women and people of color). But since then, particularly in Western democracies, we've adopted the twisted idea that everyone can and should go to college. In order to make that happen, colleges have lowered their standards to an absurd degree, such that (oversimplifying a bit here) graduates with advanced degrees still don't know anything and still can't find meaningful employment. So, my questions are:

a) Do you have any suggestions, any at all, on what should replace it? Psychology — I mean human psychology here, not rat and pigeon psychology — can't be placed on a firmer evidentiary footing without violating the rights of experimental subjects. This is a fact that cannot be circumvented. And without high-quality evidence, you cannot falsify claims anyone cares to make. Without the possibility of falsification, there is no science. So it's not obvious how to proceed, but asserting that human psychology is a science is not an acceptable substitute. If your reply is "Nothing" then I must ask, what would happen to those so ill they're incapable of taking care of themselves? We're now moving into basic moral and ethical questions. Do we have the right to claim that meaningful treatments exist, when they don't? Do we have the right to identify people as mentally ill who are not (and vice versa)? These common practices distort the entire field, and they rely on the popular view that human psychology is a science.

There are a handful of treatments that actually work, but they are not psychological treatments (as psychology is formally defined). For example, lithium is very effective in treating what is now called "bipolar disorder." But the administration of lithium is not psychology, it is pharmacology. And what should we(society as a whole) tell people genuinely in need of SOME kind of treatment? The implication of your question is that there must be something we can do, and if there isn't, we should keep that a secret. Well, no, and no. "We don't know how to help you, we've given up trying to figure it out, so just go talk to a bartender" hardly seems like responsible advise. It's responsible advice if the bartender can do a better job than a therapist. I won't make the claim, since I have no evidence, but psychologists regularly make the claim that professional counseling is more effective than talking to a bartender, even though there is no supporting evidence, and some contradicting evidence.

One might argue that the bartender uses a dangerous drug as part of his treatment, but the same can — and has been — said about the modern practice of psychology, in which drugs of questionable effectiveness and unknown side effects are enthusiastically prescribed (and clients sometimes die as a result). b) It seems that one of your biggest problems with clinical psychology is the tendency of practitioners to ignore experiments, rather than allow theories to become discredited. I take that position primarily because ignoring evidence identifies clinical psychology as unscientific, but also because it leads to unbelievable abuses of unearned authority. Certainly this is a bad thing, but isn't it more a problem with (again) highly respected incompetent people rather than the field as a whole? No, and here is why: if an incompetent can make baseless claims without anyone asking for supporting evidence, then the entire field is built on shifting sand, and the person making the claim is a mere symptom of an underlying malady.

In science, real incompetents appear from time to time, but they are quickly called to account. Last week, Nobel Prizewinner James D. Watson, world-famous co-discoverer of DNA, made some unscientific (and outrageous) claims about the intelligence of black people. As a result, within days he was fired from his prestigious post as Chancellor of the Cold Spring Laboratory. His world fame and eminence as a Nobel Prizewinner made no difference at all — his statements were unscientific and indefensible.

By contrast, when psychologist Bruno Bettelheim made the claim that autism resulted from incompetent mothering by emotionally frigid women, it was accepted without question — after all, Bettelheim was an eminent psychologist. This "refrigerator-mom" idea lasted for decades, based solely on the eminence of the originator, and many innocent, caring mothers were unfairly held responsible for something that was not their fault.

I hope I have made this point: in science, evidence stands above eminence. In human psychology, it's the other way around. From what I have seen (and I freely admit my knowledge here is quite limited), a lot of fields have similar problems to a much smaller extent. Yes, they do. All of them. The difference lies in how those problems are handled. In scientific fields, people can say anything, but they must eventually back up their claims or abandon them. By contrast, in counseling sessions all over the country, therapists still raptly listen to bogus "recovered memories," even though people outside the field see no evidence for the reality of these memories, and courts of law have decided to no longer hear cases in which "recovered memories" are the primary evidence. What about "physicists" who claim to be close to discovering cold fusion, This example supports the position that science works. When Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made their original claim, scientists all over the world tried to duplicate their results, but failed. Lots of excitement at first, but no laboratory confirmation. End of story. That's how science deals with nonsense.

On the one hand, in the interest of open dialogue we want people to feel free to make any claim they care to. On the other hand, all scientific claims must eventually be supported by evidence. Until they are, the claims are hypotheses, not theories. If the claims are eventually supported by evidence, they achieve the status of scientific theories — but they never become facts. Fact is not science's domain. or "biologists" supporting ID over evolution? That's not science. Your example is of someone relying on his status as a "biologist" to make a claim, as though a title can stand in for evidence. Science doesn't work that way. When Einstein the patent clerk published what came to be known as Special Relativity, he hadn't gotten his degree yet, but that didn't matter — only his ideas mattered. But until evidence began to support his ideas, they didn't matter very much. Later on, when Einstein the world-famous scientist disputed quantum theory, other scientists waited for evidence supporting his position, which never arrived. It's all about evidence — not standing, not shouting. It's not a perfect comparison by any means as most real physicists laugh at cold fusion Not at all! Physicists aren't laughing, they're either doing the necessary laboratory work or waiting to see how the work comes out. Science is more about patient work than slapping one's knee. And in science the door is not closed on cold fusion, because in science, doors are rarely closed, and no one is laughing. and most biologists laugh at ID, That's a little different. ID isn't even remotely plausible as it has been presented, and the arguments in favor of it tend to exhibit an embarrassing level of ignorance. One can always argue that God is pulling invisible puppet strings in a way that cannot be detected. That's an interesting philosophical position, but it cannot be tested or falsified, and therefore, true or false, it is not scientific.

But religious believers are not satisfied with the idea that God exists in the abstract. They want Him to take a break from making stars and galaxies, and smite their neighbor with the barking dog. Nothing else will do but that the ruler of the universe should come down and smite the owner of a barking dog. but isn't it the same fundamental problem of a (badly) educated person making outrageous claims before the public? If these people were to gain popular(lay) public acceptance and funding, would it somehow invalidate real physics and biology? No, because shouting cannot stand in for evidence, and all scientific positions must eventually be supported by evidence. What if this popular acceptance lead to universities churning out huge numbers of cold fusion&ID "specialists," and pushed real scientists back into a minority? That's possible, for example the Bush administration is doing all it can to thwart any scientific statements and publications that contradict Administration positions — but this again touches on the reason science exists. Science exists because of a natural human tendency to replace reason with emotion, and if humans were really rational, there would be no science — it would have no purpose. Remember, again, science is not the results, science is the practice, the discipline. Would that make all their work worthless? To answer, I must say that science is not the applications of science. Science isn't refuted or validated by application, except insofar as applications produce more evidence for or against a proposition. For example, the GPS (Global Positioning System) satellites are producing some interesting confirmations of both Special and General Relativity. That isn't the purpose of the GPS system, it's an interesting side effect.

But science is not a corporation with a quarterly earnings report, and science doesn't have to sell itself. To those who want results, science (and scientists) can be incredibly frustrating. To those who understand science, it is immensely valuable, nothing else can produce its results, and a price tag cannot be hung on it. I suspect that this is a different situation somehow, but I honestly don't see how.

What I wrote sounds vaguely to me like a fallacy of some sort, so please understand I'm not trying to attack you, just asking for clarification. There probably is a difference, I just do not see it. I think at this point you will see that, all outward appearances to the contrary, the difference between scientific and unscientific endeavors lies in the managing of evidence, the weight given to evidence, and the ascendancy of evidence over eminence. Finally, something bothered me while reading your articles. In my psychology classes we were told, over and over, that abnormal behavior is simply normal behavior "carried to an unhealthy extent" with unhealthy being defined as something like "meaningfully damaging to someone or those around them." Yes, and that is an important point about human psychology. In order to offer treatments, psychologists have to identify particular behaviors as "abnormal," e.g. unacceptable, and this is where psychology leaves the realm of science and enters the realm of religion.

Science observes reality with perfect dispassion, observing everything, judging nothing. Religion proactively divides behaviors into those deemed acceptable and unacceptable. Psychology can't offer treatments without first judging what is good and bad, a practice formerly reserved to religion. If all human behavior is organisms creatively dealing with ever-changing nature in a morally neutral universe, where is the role for corrective mental surgery?

To put this in its simplest form, when a psychologist utters the word "abnormal" about a mental state whose normalcy is proven by its existence, he has severed any connection with science and entered the domain of religion.

Is a platypus normal? I haven't read the DSM, but I assume it follows this. It does, but with many qualifying phrases and caveats that are largely ignored by psychologists. So perhaps that is why the number of disorders balloons up so much; bad spelling isn't a disorder, but being completely unable to learn how to write does at least require some kind of special attention. Yes — but is that a mental illness, and can the practice of clinical psychology do anything about it? Or would a normal, non-judgmental teacher be a better, and less expensive, choice?

The truth behind spelling as a mental illness (and many similar examples) is that psychologists have discovered they can't treat real mental illnesses (most of which are turning out to be organic in nature, treatable by chemicals, or untreatable) so they are trying to branch out into domains formerly held by bartenders, astrologers, teachers and aging aunts on porches. Then again, maybe the authors of the DSM just need to read more introductory textbooks... This may surprise you, but some of the creators of the DSM have ended up its harshest critics.

An inquiry from a psychology postgraduate at an institution of higher learning, starting an ambitious, albeit pseudoscientific, research project. And no, I didn't make this up — who could make up such a thing?

I'm doing a project to extract emotions from dreams. There is no chance for this fantasy to bear useful scientific data, so no matter which mathematical method you choose, the result will be the same: faux science, which happens to be psychology's strong suit. We need to fit the emotion points (data sets) into a function. No, what you need to do is craft a scientific, testable theory in which emotions can be extracted from the brainwaves that accompany dreams. In science, skipping over essential preliminary steps is not permitted.

If you forge ahead without bothering to create a testable theory, your work will be (1) a waste of time and grant money, and (2) another example of psychological "science." Can we use your program, please? Certainly, although this will not magically turn your work into science. Would you please provide c code or java code? Why not open a standard textbook on the subject of mathematical data reduction methods — you know, those parts of science you skipped in school while pursuing your psychology degree? Or would you prefer to use a perfect stranger's computer program without understanding how it works?

What I am saying is, this is a typical example of psychological "science" — all psychology, no science.

One more thing. You haven't bothered to say which of my hundreds of programs you are inquiring about, but as it turns out, the most useful method for reducing brainwave data would be the Fourier Transform method, for which I already provide source code here:

http://www.arachnoid.com/FFTExplorer/index.html

I read your essay with interest, as it is the same title that I am tackling for my Philosophy module of the final year of my Psychology degree. I must say that I disagree with you (!) Of course you do. You have just spent your entire educational career moving toward an advanced psychology degree. How could you possibly agree that psychology is not based in science? but your points did make me think, and I may cite you in my essay. I hope you do. Having read your feedback page I cannot resist contributing some of my own opinions. Your views are welcome. Firstly, you seem to lump together therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists, when, certainly in the UK, they are all distinct professions, with different training and have different levels of trust and respect from the public. They are distinct professions, but all of them depend on the scientific standing of human psychology. And, for the reasons set out in my article, psychology has a very poor scientific standing.

As to public trust, this has no bearing on the scientific standing of the field. Astrologers have a lot of public trust, but they don't have any science. The example of the girl who was killed by her therapists has nothing to do with Psychology. False. The fully qualified, professional psychologists who carried out the procedure were licensed to practice clinical psychology, and the procedure was widely practiced by clinical psychologists at the time of the procedure.

The responsible therapists were stripped of their licenses and jailed, not because they were discovered to be unqualified to practice clinical psychology, but because their client died. It's very convenient to say "they weren't the real thing" after the fact, but as a matter of public record, they were the real thing. These therapists were practising rebirthing, which to my knowledge is not endorsed by psychologists You need to learn how to do research. The practice was widespread and completely accepted at the time of the death. So was "recovered memory therapy", which is still practiced, even though courts of law have decided to reject any further cases in which recovered memories are the primary evidence. There have been too many cases in which the "memories" were proven to be nonsense — too many for the law, but not too many for the therapists. and, to me, sounds ridiculous and completely non-scientific. So does talk therapy, but it is also widely practiced as though it has a scientific foundation (it does not). Present clinical psychology is based on popularly held beliefs and very poor research. In contrast, in modern psychology, counselling tends to include well researched ... Stop! Did you actually read my article? Consider these points:

1. Psychologists counsel teenagers to prevent them from committing suicide.
2. Psychologists believe this counseling to be effective.
3. But ... in order for that to be anything but a belief, there would have to be a scientific study — a scientific study — to validate the belief.
4. Such a scientific study would require a valid experimental protocol, which means a double-blind design consisting of experimental and control groups.
5. At the end of the study, we could compare the number of suicides among the experimental group, who received the test therapy, and the control group, who received a sham therapy.
6. As described, the study would violate the rights of the subjects in the control group, which is why such a study has never been performed and will never be performed.

Therefore, no matter how strongly you feel about this, the present practice of human clinical psychology is not scientific. Rat psychology, pigeon psychology, yes, scientific to a fare-thee-well, but not human psychology. Did I mention that pigeons don't commit suicide? and successful methods such as Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. These practices are believed to be "successful" by people who haven't the slightest idea how success is measured in science. If 1,000 people take the therapy, and if all of them declare that they feel better, this can only represent an example of conjecture and a deplorable confusion of correlation and causation — until and unless there is a plausible control group: a control group who sincerely believes they are receiving treatment, administered by therapists who sincerely believe they are delivering effective treatment. I have experienced this myself and found that it was extremely helpful. Yes, "extremely helpful." Prefrontal lobotomies were also regarded as "extremely helpful," and keeping Eastern European Jewish immigrants out of the U.S. was regarded as "extremely helpful" during Hitler's reign, based on a deliberately rigged series of I.Q. tests (the psychologist responsible later confessed as much), and any number of other examples, all based on the spectacularly sloppy science that is common in human psychology. Yes, talking to anyone can relieve distress (I am a suicide helpline volunteer, so I know this), but CBT goes a lot further and encourages a positive way of thinking. Prove it. You are stating a belief, not a scientific finding. If a legitimate scientific study were to be designed, the researchers would be arrested and jailed before they could publish their results. I definitely felt a great benefit. My God. If only you could have learned even a small bit of science during your professional training, you would be profoundly embarrassed to speak this way. Another thing which annoyed me about your essay (!) was that you seem to think that Psychology is all about therapies that I have never been taught about in my degree, and mental illness. There are many other areas of Psychology that are rigorously scientific ... Utter nonsense. In any case, according to your remarks above, you felt better after experiencing therapy, and on that basis you conclude it must have been a scientific practice. This proves you are unqualified to evaluate what is and is not scientific. and well respected: Respect has no bearing on the issue under discussion. Authorities are respected, but science rejects all authority. Cognitive Psychology, Neuropsychology, Biological Psychology, Developmental Psychology...the list goes on and on. Indeed it does, and all of them are based on belief, not science. Prove me wrong — point out the studies that demonstrate the efficacy of any of these fields, studies with control groups composed of therapists and clients, both of whom sincerely believe they are engaged in real therapy.

Hint: there have never been such studies, anywhere, ever, because they would violate basic ethical standards as well as common sense. I certainly feel I have been given a scientific education ... And yet, as you have just proven, you are scientifically illiterate. You do not have the foggiest idea what constitutes a scientific finding. and intend to go on to a career as a Counselling Psychologist...which will not result in me administering pseudoscientific fringe therapies to my clients! No, certainly not, at least according to what you believe constitutes science. And that is by design, not by accident — your training doesn't include the fundamentals of science because it would cause all students above a certain minimal I.Q. to abandon the field.

Don't misunderstand the above remark. You are obviously thoughtful and intelligent, and it is equally obvious that you have been conned. One final point: I think a lot of people believe Psychology is all about Freud and psychoanalysis, which is taught to [ ... ] University students, at the very least, as an example of how Psychology should NOT be: unfalsifiable, imaginary tosh. It is all unfalsifiable. To falsify anything, real science would have to take place. Real science means real research, and real research requires rigorous and strict experimental designs. Such research is not carried out in human psychology. I hope you can understand that Psychology is a varied and fascinating discipline, and most definitely scientific. I hope you will eventually understand that waving your hands in the air cannot stand in for actual scientific research.

There is something you need to recognize about a debate like this — it doesn't matter how often you (or the many others who have tried this tactic) say "scientific" or "I felt better" — without repeatable scientific evidence, it's all cocktail chatter.

Here is a young woman, a newly minted psychologist with all the coursework fresh in her mind, willing to say such things as "I definitely felt a great benefit." and "I certainly feel I have been given a scientific education" without a hint of irony or self-consciousness. It is the business of science not to care how we feel about it — indeed, science's primary role is to separate evidence from how we feel about evidence. In that light, this young woman's remarks contradict themselves, but she can't see this. The reason? She doesn't know anything about science.

But she's certainly in touch with her feelings — among psychologists, that's a "good thing." I have no doubt she'll make a terrific psychologist. Science will just have to get along without her.

I would like to ask how you can state that physics is a science and that psychology is not, when there is much evidence from physics which is used and applied within psychology. You do realize, don't you, that in science we rely entirely on evidence? Where's the evidence for your statement? Which part of the scientific theory of physics is applied to psychology?

And do you think the application of a scientific principle from one field to a second automatically confers a scientific standing to the second? If this were true, astrology would become a science on the ground that astrologers look at stars just as astronomers do.

The similarity between astrology and astronomy lies in the attention given to stars and planets. The difference between astrology and astronomy lies in what the observers do with their results.

In other words, the distinction between astrology and astronomy lies, not in superficial outward appearance, but in substance.

Another example. If we conduct a careful scientific study of UFO sightings, does this confer a scientific standing to UFOs themselves, or only to the study?

Just a very brief comment on your analysis of modern clinical psychology (CP). I think that while you are quite right to question clinical psychology from your (limited) understanding, My understanding is not limited. I understand perfectly well that clinical psychology is not a science, and I understand why this is true. I understand this arises from its history, its traditions and its present form. Clinical psychology is not evidence-based, and its practitioners learn this during the more serious training programs. that understanding is lacking in fundamental information Nonsense. The fundamental information you are hinting at doesn't exist. Therapists sometimes kill their clients due to lack of discipline that a solid evidence-based foundation would provide. Such a foundation would greatly increase the standing of the field, but it simply does not exist.

As a result, in repeated studies, it is discovered that clinicians cannot agree on either diagnosis or therapy — both are based on personal judgment and whim, rather than a solid foundation of persuasive empirical evidence and an underlying basis in theory.

Clinical psychologists can do whatever they please because there is no possibility of proving that any specific practice is ineffective or harmful. Such proof would have to come from the conclusive falsification of any assertion about human psychology. Such a falsification would necessarily result from a strictly designed, scientific study, with a control and an experimental group, and neither group could know which they were.

Apart from the obvious ethical issues, once such a study were designed and conducted, the researchers and their institution would be sued by members of the experimental group — they would sue because they believed they were receiving a proven, efficacious treatment, not an experimental protocol. The control group would also sue, because they would discover they were getting the placebo, not anything even believed to be efficacious. But at the outset of the study, both the experimental and control groups must be told that they will receive efficacious treatment, in other words, the experimenters would have to lie. This is why such studies are never carried out, and this is why there is no science in clinical psychology.

When I hear from someone like you, someone who thinks there is science at work in clinical psychology, I realize I am dealing with a person who has no idea what constitutes science. and as such does CP a very unjust representation. When therapists kill their clients out of ignorance as has been reported in the literature, to describe clinical psychology as anything but a loosely grouped set of beliefs is the unjust representation.

When a prominent therapist at the Harvard Medical School asserts that alien abductees must be taken seriously, and UFO abductions represent reality, it becomes clear what standing clinical psychology has in the world of science. You will find upon closer inspection that any clinical practice that is taught on doctoral training courses these days MUST be evidence based. You are deliberately blurring the issue under discussion, or you are astonishingly ignorant of the kind of training clinical psychologists receive. Training in clinical psychology is not medical training, and clinical psychologists are not doctors. The fields are distinct and separate for a reason. For example CBT (and yes there are others) is proven time after time to be an effective treatment Complete nonsense. There never been a properly designed scientific study of CBT, with the kinds of controls required for a proper evaluation of the practice. The reason there have been no proper studies is that it would violate the rights of the clients. It is a basic ethical issue. (equal to or more effective than medication) This is astonishing. There is no scientific, evidentiary basis for this remark, as any serious researcher will tell you. for many mental disorders (which, if left untreated are extremley disabling and have further more salient consequences). You abandoned any pretense of serious argument with "if left untreated." First, it is false on its face — if left untreated, many conditions remit, but the results are lost because the subject is not part of a scientific study. If the subject is part of a study, nothing can be left untreated, for ethical reasons. This means there is no scientific basis for your remarks. Factor/composition analysis confirm that it IS the CBT (which is very much based in scientific theroy) I haver never seen so much intense hand-waving. CBT is not now, nor has it ever been, based on any kind of scientific evidence. This is well-understood by the more educated and serious practitioners of clinical psychology. that is the effective agent in treatment before you start barking up that tree. This may or may not be true, but it is pure conjecture. It has never been demonstrated in properly designed scientific research. If you are going to comment in this fashion please have a look at the evidence first! I have, and you very clearly have not. There is no evidence such as you describe. If there were, the researchers would be arrested for violating the rights of their experimental subjects. A simple lack of understanding of a concept does not make it un-true. And asserting that something is true without evidence is called "belief." Your remark above in essence says a proposition is true until it has been proven false. This is not how science or logic works, and it only reveals the gaps in your education. a search on amazon for "science and pseudoscience in clinical psychology" would be a good start for you. No, it would be a good start for you, although your complete lack of logical and critical thinking skills might turn the exercise into a minefield. I realise that you did not refer to experimental psychology when you wrote this essay as EP is probably more grounded in empiricism than much of experimental physics and by your merit "more scientific". Not really. Experimental psychology cannot control the practice of clinical psychology. The reason it cannot is because experimental psychology cannot produce the kind of evidence that meets the single most important property of a scientific theory, that of falsifiability. Moreover, you do not refer to clinical neuropsychology which is 100% "scientific" and 100% psychology there is no arguing this point, I agree without reservation — your knowledge of these topics is so superficial that there really is no possibility for arguing these points, for lack of a coherent, educated opponent. yest this is a part of clinical psychology you chose to ignore? "Clinical neuropsychology" is a bridge field meant to borrow status from mainstream medicine, in order to grant clinical psychology a standing it cannot achieve on its own. There are many similar bridge fields. They represent the activities of practitioners abandoning psychology in small steps. I hope that in the future you will take time to properly research your topics or stick to your area of expertise. You have failed to either address or refute any of the points in my research — not one. Your inability to grasp the present state of clinical psychology arises from the purest variety of ignorance.

I simply could not read the entirety of your e-mail as i found it quite nonsensical. Of course you did. You're not a scientist. You have no instinct for the topic, you don't understand how science works. If you witnessed an example in which a course of therapy was followed by a marked improvement in a client's condition, it would never occur to you to wonder if the outcome followed from the treatment or resulted from some other cause. You would be very likely to confuse correlation with causation, the error of a scientific illiterate.

The majority of what passes for science in psychology is of just that kind — the worshipful recording of superficial correlations, retrospective studies, no control groups, advocacy instead of research. I am a doctoral trainee clinical psychologist in my first year in [ ... ] and i assure you evidence based practice is an absolute requirement of our practice, to do otherwise is quite illegal. This is utter nonsense. Clinical psychology has no basis in science or evidence, as has been proven over and over again in research and courts of law. And the unscientific practice of clinical psychology is certainly not punished in courts of law, otherwise all the Freudian analysts would be arrested immediately.

You have no grasp of the real world, the world outside the classroom. You will eventually understand that world, and you will come to fully understand the nature and standing of clinical psychology.

Let's say a therapy exists that is believed to reduce the probability of teenage suicide. Some naïve soul decides to study this proposition scientifically. He designs an experiment consisting of experimental and control groups — teenagers thought to be at risk of suicide.

The first problem is the researcher would have to design a faux therapy for the control group, a therapy so convincing that neither the practitioners nor the subjects would realize they were members of the control group — supremely unlikely. The second problem is one of ethics — if there is any risk that the subjects might commit suicide, then the existence of the control group represents a violation of fundamental human rights. As a result, such studies are never performed, and the notion that a particular therapy is effective can only be a belief.

This is one of the basic limitations in psychological research, and it has many lesser forms. It prevents the generation of high quality scientific evidence about human behavior. You just don't understand the field, and saying "scientific" over and over again like a mantra cannot change this reality. My undergraduate degree was in psychology and neuroscience and i found neuroscience to be no more or less 'scientific' in its approach, and this is the reality of the situation. Yes, and I must agree — "no more or less scientific." When one compares apples and oranges, it's important to first establish the absolute ranking of the fruit basket taken as a whole.

Also, people have tried to legitimize clinical psychology by associating it with more substantive fields, but this doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of clinical practice consists of people talking to each other. Talk therapy is the most often practiced, and least understood, part of clinical practice. It is in the area of talk therapy that science has had no influence whatever. I will not argue all of your points You have yet to address a single substantive point in my article or during this exchange — in fact, you just confessed that you couldn't be bothered to fully read my earlier reply. So don't be annoyed if I have realistic expectations about this conversation. simply one that of CBT [Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy]:

Quite simply searching CBT meta-analysis in any academic journal collections website (i'm assuming you know what this is) will give you countless validations of my statement of the effectiveness of CBT For God's sake. The issue under discussion is not whether CBT is effective. The issue is whether that point has been demonstrated scientifically. It hasn't.

Don't you even realize this discussion, this issue, is not about whether clinical psychology works, but whether that point can be made in a scientific way?

There has never been a single scientific study of CBT, ever, anywhere in the world. Such a study would consist of experimental and control groups, and the control group would be provided with a fully convincing, sham therapy. For statistical validity, neither the therapists nor the clients could know which group they belonged to. This requirement is simultaneously essential and impossible.

Because