Work of renowned UK psychologist Hans Eysenck ruled ‘unsafe’ | Hacker News Reader

Work of renowned UK psychologist Hans Eysenck ruled ‘unsafe’

theguardian.com

32 pointsidl3Y13 comments

Well that's a pretty confusing article. As far as I can see all it points out is that the guy had theories claiming cancer and heart-disease were caused in part by certain mindsets. Then it goes on to mention how these theories were apparently very successfully tested by him, by preventing people from falling sick.

And so the claims he made are apparently supposed to sound "ridiculous" enough to the reader to discredit his work? Strange.

So not all his work, but his work on "cancer-prone personalities", correct? I recall reading one of his books (the title escapes me right now), but this particular theory was never discussed in that book.

Yeah this is a minor part of his work. I know people who specialize in personality-health relationships and have never heard them base anything on Eysencks work in that area. Conversely, I'm very familiar with Eysencks work in general but have never heard of this.

Having said that, there are a couple of studies I've wondered about, and this makes me think about a second look at them. They too aren't what he's most known for though, which is more in the area of measurement.

It is the quality of the research methods used to support his ideas that are coming under fire. The fact that somebody published a study (or studies), even in well-respected journals, does not compensate for poor design. Likewise, poor design and unsupported conclusions in some studies does not automatically negate every other study a researcher has conducted. Designing, carrying out, and interpreting science is not something that can be done in headlines.

Where I come from, the formal science of psychology, is often mocked by intelligent people. This is scandal to those that put weight on it, to others, simply more of the same.

For some people in academia there is no such thing as truth. It is all social or personal constructs.

If that is your attitude then how would you do science?

And so you would leave prediction of human behavior to paranormalists, or to reductionists? Even neuroscience requires a science of behavior to have something to predict.

psychology is a validated science. What you call intelligent people are probably street smart that appear to you intelligent

What does "validated science" mean?

I don't think psychology is a "science" in the same sense that chemistry is.

Psychology is a pursuit of knowledge but in many ways is more akin to religion or astrology than hard science. Or as Paul Lutus puts it "Psychology is not a science, it's a belief system."

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?p=3199

That is not to invalidate psychology (or religion, or for that matter astrology). Belief systems are important. They just aren't "science".

That is a misconception of psychology. I am not surprised, because psychology only relatively recently broke with philosophy. Until the 1940s few universities had a separate department of psychology, and professors of psychology were usually to be found in the philosophy department. Chemistry broke with philosophy when it abandoned hidden inner essences as explanations of chemical events, and as it became a science, physiology dropped the inner vis viva or élan vital in favor of mechanistic explanations of the body's workings. In any case, I recommend searching for "objective psychology" which emphasizes observation and experimentation, and "comparative psychology" which emphasizes the common origin of all species, including human beings, in natural selection, and helps to promote purely natural accounts of human behavior. Additionally, take a look at "radical behaviorism". It is known that cognitive behavioral therapies are effective. They are based on radical behaviorism. Whether or not behavior analysis is a part of psychology, the same as psychology, or independent of psychology is still an ongoing debate. Professional organizations such as the Association for Behavior Analysis, and journals, such as The Behavior Analyst, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, give the field an identity.

For more information: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Behaviorism-Behavior-Cu...

To reiterate: no, psychology is not akin to religion or astrology:

> Psychologists use the scientific method to conduct their research. The scientific method is a standardized way of making observations, gathering data, forming theories, testing predictions, and interpreting results.[1]

[1] https://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/researchmetho...

> It is known that cognitive behavioral therapies are effective. They are based on radical behaviorism.

I thought a radical behaviorist would know that there is no such thing as thinking, therefore you can't have anything "cognitive" in the therapy.

Not quite. Skinner calls the mind, will, ego, and the like explanatory fictions, because they are supposed to explain something but fail to explain, for at least two reasons (criticisms of mentalism): autonomy[1] and superfluity[2].

He does not deny their existence, he just deems those explanatory fictions impractical to focus on (see the two criticisms below) and that they are not a necessity or a requirement when it comes to observing and modifying behavior. Radical behaviorists take the pragmatic approach.

The definition of "cognition" in the context of behavior modification is "covert verbalizations and imagery; frequently called believing, thinking, expecting, and perceiving". Its existence is not denied by radical behaviorists.

> An important aspect of Skinner's approach is that he rejected the distinction of a mental world that is separate from the physical world (which is mentalism, a form of dualism). Thus, although he accepted that private speech and covert images exist, he regarded them as being no different in principle from public speech and overt acts of seeing. Moreover, like Watson, he emphasized the importance in a science of behavior of studying the effects of the external environment on overt behavior.

In any case, to clarify, I am not trying to say that cognitive-behavioral therapy = radical behaviorism. What I am saying is that Skinner's conditioning theories (along with Watson, and radical behaviorism in general) had a foundational influence over the development of cognitive-behavioral therapy. It greatly influenced both the development of behavior modification and cognitive-behavioral therapy.

I really recommend the book I mentioned above, along with this one: https://www.amazon.com/Behavior-Modification-What-How-Do/dp/...

You might want to check out the differences between the behavioral approach and the psychodiagnostic approach. They have different goals, methods, and so forth, but they are supposed to work together. :)

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I apologize if my comment raised more questions than provided answers, but this subject is really really broad and I would even dare to say complicated. If you are really curious then you should probably read the two books I mentioned (at the very least).

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[1] The capacity of a thing, particularly an organism, to behave. When a hypothetical entity, such as mind, inner self, or an inner homunculus, is said to act so as to cause observed behavior, the supposed autonomy obstructs inquiry by diverting study to the impossible task of explaining the behavior of something that cannot be observed.

[2] Mental causes only restate the original observation in more obscure terms. When mental causes are inferred from the behavior they are purported to explain, the supposed "explanation" is purely circular, is superfluous, and impedes efforts to find an explanation based on natural events.

Not meant to attack you; I just wonder how Rational Therapy (the other root of the cognitive behavioral therapy) is disappearing from the history of psychology. I just found about it recently, and was surprised to see how big thing it used to be decades ago, considering that these days one can study psychology and never even hear about it.

Makes me wonder how much of the history of science is not about people who actually invented things, but about those who popularized them successfully. But this is not just in psychology; we have the Edison vs Tesla in physics, etc. It's like some compression algorithm: if there are too many inventors doing similar things, history will pick one of them and give him all the credit. No bad intention is necessary in this process; it's just that people don't care enough to remember all the details, and the simpler version is easier to remember.

I wonder whether our descendants a few centuries later will remember this era as one where Albert Einstein discovered relativity and quantum physics, and sent the rockets to Mars.

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