I'm very disappointed in my chosen field right now. I finally figured out why psychology is not only a soft science but is openly ridiculed by other fields and laymen alike. Some of the wishy-washy approximated studies present their findings as absolute fact... to the point of utter silliness. Psychologists use mathematical terms to describe non-mathematical relationships and then wonder why they get funny looks. The graphs are not graphs. The math is not math. The math that's supposed to describe the graph doesn't. Some of the terminology is mixed up into an approximation of meaning that the other sciences have pinned down -- dare I say it? -- to a science.
Up until this point, my profs and so-on have been pretty good at pointing out when a theory or line of research turned out to be utter bullshit. The higher I get in the curriculum, the harder it is to distinguish the diamonds from the rough... and instead of helping us poor students out with it; they just present the whole schmear as easily proven scientific fact. Well, I hate to break it to you high and mighty Nobel Laureate Ph.D.s, that's not how science works. When there's ambiguity, you must state the ambiguity. When there is no set pattern, just a suggestion of a trend, you must state that it requires further research to determine exact relationships... and an admission that those relationships may not be general, but specific to the test group. If I hadn't had any taste of harder science, if I was ignorant of the methods of psychological research, I might be duped into believing things that aren't even self-consistent.
For all you folks out there that aren't familiar with the science, I can use Sigmund Freud as a beautiful example of what I'm talking about. I'll state it clearly: Freud’s theories have been proven wrong. They are Incorrect. Outdated. The methods he used to collect data were flawed in very basic ways and his subjects were not normal in any sense of the word. As far as we can tell without better data from the times, his test group was not only far too small to be representative of the population, but restricted to 12 sexually repressed Victorian age nymphomaniacs. That is not to say that his theories were without merit, for some of the general concepts he provided are still very useful in the study of psychology today. It's just that the conclusions he drew from his research were invalid and over-reaching. Yet, despite knowing for I don't know how long that Freud was wrong, psychoanalytics persisted for about 60 years.
Research is a powerful force in the world. Without it we would not have any of the technologies leading up to the computers allowing me to post this blog. There is a pretty simple and generally agreed upon method for doing research that shows a causational relationship between two variables. Here's the scientific method if you needed a refresher. I like the little backward loop on that flow chart; it shows a part of research that happens behind the scenes that really makes it all worthwhile. See, people don't like to publish papers about scientists being kinda right and kinda wrong with no clear distinction. So, the way we fix it (and strengthen the scientific merit of the paper), is by looking at what we found in the data, picking out the interesting parts, and repeating the whole experiment just for that part. In that way, we can either thoroughly confirm a new concept, or totally throw it out. In psychology in particular, this is useful because sometimes the statistical analysis of an experiment can show flaws in our method that muddy the results. By repeating the process and elimination the inconsistencies of our method we can get better results. That's not to say that well done research can ever be perfect. We don't have the time or resources to do a complete study that undeniably proves anything, but we can get to a point where we are pretty sure. Of course, we need to state that we are only pretty sure and not completely sure. Often, research will create more questions than it answers. More questions mean job security for dedicated researchers (hint hint). The chart shown above is not the only qualifications for good research, but a part of the multitude of things that drives the research process. The specific experimental parameters are also very important. The project guide link I have is for a school sponsored science fair, but the general concepts are pretty good. Note that I don't say that they are exactly right, just pretty good.
The saddest thing about all of this is that most of the silly stuff would be very easy to eliminate. All that needs to be done is for anyone teaching psychology to stick to solid research, hedge bets with disclaimers of inaccuracy, and generally stop claiming to know the absolute truth of anything. Oh, and use scientific terminology the same way the other sciences do. Seriously. You may not think it matters much, but if you can sling the lingo so everyone else understands it, you make yourself look smarter, not dumber. Make up your own words if you need to, but for things already decided, don't go fiddling around with it. Easy.
Are you sure it's not just the professors you have encountered, in regards to this view of the relationship between Psychology and science? As a Psychology major, myself, I never once had a professor claim something as absolute truth in Psychology. As a matter of fact, I can name a good portion of Psychology classes wherein the professor actively encouraged us to question the studies we read in the texts, the methods used, further studies that backed it up or disproved it, all of that. Even in my Psychology Research Methods class my professor pounded into us to always question any piece of psychological science we encountered.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the whole of Psychology can be labeled as you have done so until you have absolute proof yourself that it's like that. I also think, based on conversations with my professors, that the field is evolving from a scientific sense. Historically it clinged heavily to science the way you illustrated it just so it could be considered a legitimate field. Now that very few question it from that standpoint, they can focus less on proving themselves and more on their actual studies. Perhaps 10 or 15 years from now we will see the field of Psychology using science in the way it was always meant to be used but just wasn't able to.
The way one of my profs presented Opponent Process theory is the inspiration for this. I've also had this trouble with more minor things from other profs, but the paper that was cited (not above) was presented with some very serious flaws, and when I asked about it, the prof avoided responsibility for it by stating that the way she presented it was as the authors had intended it. The graphs describing the theory, along with the expression labeling it are not self consistent. The formula presented is a-b=c where 'a' is the first theoretical process, 'b' is the second theoretical process and 'c' is the empirical measurement of affect. Part of the graph shows the 'a' process at normal, the 'b' process well below normal, and 'c' just above normal. I don't care which science you're in, the difference between two numbers is less than the number subtracted from. That was only the most noticeable error. I might be able to upload the graph itself in an update of the blog, if that would help. The paper cited in class is "Opponent Process and Drug Dependence: Neurobiological Mechanisms" by Koob, Markou, Weiss, and Schultes if you want to try looking it up. I couldn't find it. Now, I realize that this isn't a representative of the science as a whole, but it should at least be alarming that this kind of thing would make it's way into an upper division classroom. It's exactly this kind of thing that can cause people to "lose faith" in psychology.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, the concept contained in the paper is actually pretty good, and I did find several other papers published on the subject. I did not see whether or not the physiological elements were actually being measured to confirm the theoretical theory, but that part is easy to understand when thinking of pain and endorphins.