Also, have you read the paper in question, or are you judging it from a press release and/or journalist's summary?
False, I am very familiar with the current state of psychological research, and it would be more productive for you to address the topic.
> Just the idea that there is no room in science for making, repeating and reporting observations is wrong.
Yes, and therefore it's a good thing that I never said this anywhere, only you did. What I do say is that observations can only be a preliminary to science. Science requires us to propose a theory about those observations, a theory that can be empirically tested and potentially falsified, a theory that can produce consensus between different workers in the field.
If we instead limit ourselves to observations and never try to craft a theory, we can accept any correlation as significant and call it science -- for example, I can shake a dried gourd over a cold sufferer and the cold will eventually go away. Have I cured the cold? Is that science?
Much of modern psychological research is on a par with shaking a dried gourd over a cold sufferer and calling the outcome significant. For example, recent meta-analyses show that talk therapies are indistinguishable from each other and from the placebo effect. Based on current studies, no one can say that talk therapy is an example of the placebo effect, only that it's indistinguishable from it.
Here is the conclusion of a recent psychology scandal:
http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2012/11/final-repor...
Quote: "In their exhaustive final report about the fraud affair that rocked social psychology last year, three investigative panels today collectively find fault with the field itself. They paint an image of a "sloppy" research culture in which some scientists don't understand the essentials of statistics, journal-selected article reviewers encourage researchers to leave unwelcome data out of their papers, and even the most prestigious journals print results that are obviously too good to be true."
> Also, have you read the paper in question ...
Of course. No theory, no science. Are you prepared to judge astrology to be a pseudoscience without reading every paper that's been published on the topic?
Can this not be empirically tested? Can it not be falsified or generate consensus?
I would think it more direct to criticize theories like this for their qualial basis. Still, how is the statistical nature of a sufficiently large sample of humans providing qualial data different from that of a sufficiently large number of H20 molecules providing neutrino collision data?
But that's not a theory, that's an observation. A theory would explain what had been observed, generalize it, make predictions about things not observed, and be falsifiable by new evidence. You know, like in science.
> Can this not be empirically tested?
Observations can only be collected, the term "test" isn't meaningful. Theories can be tested because they presume to explain what's been observed, and there can be any number of possible explanations for a given observation.
Here's an example. If I say, "the night sky is filled with little points of light," I have made an observation, for which the term "test" doesn't apply -- everyone will make the same observation about the night sky. But if I say, "those points are actually thermonuclear furnaces like our sun but at much greater distances," that theory can be tested and potentially falsified -- it meets the requirements for science.
> Can it not be falsified or generate consensus?
Not unless the observation leads to a testable theory, and won't produce consensus unless that theory is confirmed. For example, in some neuroscientific work I was involved in many years ago, we established that people could tell which direction a sound was coming from even if the volume in each ear was artificially changed, meaning the sense of direction of the sound wasn't dependent on it being louder in one ear than the other -- something else was involved.
That's an observation, not very important and certainly not falsifiable. But then neuroscientists crafted a theory that people identified the direction of a sound based on its arrival time, not its volume. Now we had a testable theory, one that we confirmed using signal generators that presented sounds that had been time-delayed but that were exactly the same volume, by way of headphones, and asked subjects to identify the apparent direction of the sound. That study in turn led to a reassessment of how the human hearing system works, and its ability to distinguish arrival times in the millisecond regime, something that at the time was rather controversial.
Put simply, observing things can only lead to science (is not itself science), because (among other things) science requires a basis for falsification, and observations cannot be falsified -- everyone who goes out after dark sees a sky filled with points of light. But the claim that people directionalized sound based on its arrival time was simultaneously testable and initially very questionable because of the time discrimination ability it implied. It turned out to be true, and it was certainly science.
Psychologists famously do not craft theories or establish general principles that might unite their field or produce consensus among different workers, as a result of which psychology drifts from one fad to another and breaks apart into more and more splinter groups over time (psychiatry and clinical psychology are only the best-known of 54 subfields presently recognized within the field).
Symptomatic of psychology's way of doing "science" was the fact that all the new mental illnesses included in the new DSM, recently published, were included based on -- not medical research -- but secret votes. Some conditions that had been voted into the prior version were voted out (including Asperger Syndrome), but not one new condition was included based on medical and clinical evidence that identified a cause, as is required in mainstream medicine. All decisions were carried out in secret, by voting experts. No microscopes, no brain scans, and not one identified cause.
This is all rather academic, because as we speak, emphasis is shifting away from psychiatry and psychology to neuroscience, because the public has gradually become aware of the importance of evidence-based practice in medicine and other fields, a move reinforced by the fact that psychiatry and psychology have such poor evidence to support its clinical activities.
> Still, how is the statistical nature of a sufficiently large sample of humans providing qualial data different from that of a sufficiently large number of H20 molecules providing neutrino collision data?
The difference is that physicists don't bother publishing until they have a theory about why the neutrinos behave the way they do. Also physicists don't have clinics, and they don't try to tell people how sick they are, based on diseases they voted into existence.
According to your example about the night sky, a claim is merely an observation if everyone will make the same claim in response to the same evidence. This seems very porous and weak, but following that logic, I would argue that given evidence that "the brain generates our experience of self by merging information about our body from multiple sources, including the eyes, the skin, the ears, and even one’s internal organs" it does not obviously follow that by observing a visualization of your body and heart beat will cause one to experience the phenomena of dissociation with his body. Then it seems that claiming so and contriving repeated samples is scientific.
It seems to me, the point you're really driving at is that a claim must be couched in some systemic view. It must base itself on a collection of related reinforcing ideas and assumptions (and state as much), and refine or extend that system. These systems abstract irrelevant things. Neuroscientific work is not phrased in string theory. It builds on a system that includes physical assumptions. Should a theoretical physicist argue neuroscience is on shaky ground because we do not understand all the details of the underlying physics? Should a neuroscientist argue evolutionary anthropology is on shaky ground because we don't understand all the details of the underlying neuroscience?
To your broader point. The motives and actions of neither psychiatric pharma, nor society, nor academia even, do not invalidate the possibility that collections of reinforcing ideas and assumptions can explain human thought at some level of neuroscientific abstraction. For better or worse, Jung, Freud, etc have established such systems which can and have been subject to methodical examination and testing by others. That they have subsequently not held up does not mean that the possibility is invalid.
I think also that there's a tendency to conflate the physicality (non-qualiality) of phenomena and its ability to be subject to "scientific" methods. And yet entrepreneurs expand knowledge with this all the time, as they make predictions about customer behavior, statistically test, refine, extend... This might not be Los Alamos "science", but it's method is certainly "scientific".
Not exactly, since that's true of established theories also. I would instead say that an observation is something that collects data but doesn't try to integrate it into a general pattern or thesis. For example, in England the peppered moth changed colors between 1700 and 1850. Before 1700 it was light-colored, after 1850, it had fully transitioned to a darker color. We now have an observation, a description. No matter how many times the observation is repeated, we will find once again that the moths change color over time, but we still have no explanation.
Eventually, because of the theory of evolution by natural selection, the color change was explained as resulting from the moth's ability to hide from predators by having the same general color as its surroundings -- and the color of the surroundings had changed as a result of coal-burning. Those moths that happened by chance to have genes for a darker color, were better able to hide from predators. We now have a theory. Our theory can be applied to other neighborhoods, even other species. It's not just a specific statement about a particular moth species in a particular place, it's a general statement about reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution
> The motives and actions of neither psychiatric pharma, nor society, nor academia even, do not invalidate the possibility that collections of reinforcing ideas and assumptions can explain human thought at some level of neuroscientific abstraction.
Yes, but the principle is not the fact. Also, psychology and neuroscience are as different as two fields can possibly be. Psychology studies the mind, which is a philosophical abstraction lacking a physical embodiment. Neuroscience studies the brain and nervous system, which are physical entities amenable to empirical observations, observations on which similarly equipped observers can (must) agree.
> For better or worse, Jung, Freud, etc have established such systems which can and have been subject to methodical examination and testing by others. That they have subsequently not held up does not mean that the possibility is invalid.
Actually yes, because of the null hypothesis (the precept that an idea without evidence is assumed to be false), it does mean that. An essential property of scientific theories is that they must be empirically falsifiable in practical tests. Some psychological theories cannot be meaningfully tested, which makes them unscientific. Others can be tested, have been tested, and have been falsified, which makes them unscientific.
> And yet entrepreneurs expand knowledge with this all the time, as they make predictions about customer behavior, statistically test, refine, extend...
Yes, but without a theory that both explains and correctly predicts particular outcomes in advance -- that shows and proves a link between causes and effects -- there is no testable theory and there is no science.
> This might not be Los Alamos "science", but it's method is certainly "scientific".
Exercise of a particular scientific method isn't by itself enough to call something science. Were this not true, I could hire some scientists to study astrology and thereby make astrology into a science:
http://arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html#The_Architecture_...
> Should a neuroscientist argue evolutionary anthropology is on shaky ground because we don't understand all the details of the underlying neuroscience?
In a word, yes, he or she should do just that. If there's no structure that connects repeated observations with an empirical, testable theory, it's not science.
Why do I care? Why should anyone care what psychiatrists and psychologists do? Because they have public clinics and, rather than wait for people to call on them for help, they shout from the rooftops about how sick people are, using as "evidence" the symptoms of diseases they voted into existence. Then they prescribe drugs that have no reliable clinical evidence for effectiveness. More here:
"The Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America" : http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/04/28/the-astonishing-rise-...