- #36
BillTre
Science Advisor
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Student100 said:I myself do not believe in any of the research presented by the soft "sciences" (psychologists - and it's many sub-fields like neuroscience, political science, sociologists, etc.)
StatGuy2000 said:Are you suggesting that all research presented in psychology or neuroscience are invalid? If you can point to poor methodology, poor analysis methods, or lack of replicability as a reason to be skeptical for some (if not many) of research in psychology or neuroscience. But don't believe in any? That is an anti-science position you are taking.
Student100 said:I haven't seen any research that is reproducible, has predictive power, or useful. There is also a complete lack of agreement on the foundations from those fields. If you have such findings, please share.
I think you are completely off base with this.
I have worked in both Psychology labs and Neuroscience labs (both can be in Neuroscience Institutes, like one where I worked).
To begin with, most Neuroscience labs are just biology labs (anatomy, physiology, behavior, development, genetics). A few involve actual psychological variables (psychophysics, cognitive psych). They all have generated reproducible results and publish in peer reviewed journals.
I have published studies 20 or 30 years ago, which are being continuously repeated and reproduced as my reagents (monoclonal antibodies that label embryonic anatomy) are used in the analysis of new experiments.
As an undergrad, I worked in a Visual Psychophysics lab. They measure things like thresholds of human perceptual awareness (a psychological thing involving the consciousness) under different conditions and relate them to what is known of the underlying Neurobiology. A lot of highly reproducible numbers were generated there.
Cognitive and Perceptual Psychology has been very usefully paired with brain imaging techniques (of anatomy and activity) to show areas associated with particular tasks. These kinds of studies are relevant to medicine in that they enlighten issues of brain function.
WRT the Conceptual Foundations of Psychology and Neuroscience: (to me anyway) it is the biological processing of information (in the nervous system: sensory inputs, motor outputs, in between stuff, anatomy and physiology of the neural network, etc.) and (psychologically) how a behaving organism works from the inside.
How the individual human information processing system aware of external states, its internal states, and how it generates behavior.
Seems to me, this would cover most issues.