Is Psychology and social science really a science?

[aquitaine]

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that more often than not people in the fields of psychology and social sciences will abuse the scientific method in order to justify their own inane BS. Am I right or wrong? Please explain, thanks.

 

[Math Is Hard]

Could you share some examples?

 

[Pengwuino]

I think its fairly universal to justify things using a sort of scientific method. I practically identify the word "justify" with the idea of "scientific method" even.

 

[radou]

I wonder if this applies today.

 

[Char. Limit]

Psychology is somewhat of a science... yet sociology is just a backdrop for propaganda.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

 

[Kajahtava]

I reckon that about 5% of the papers in psychology meet the scientific method. For the most part it's just 'any-thing goes' reasoning. It's also highly influenced by current cultural opinions. Read this:

Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham asserted in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent that "Batman stories are psychologically homosexual". He claimed, "The Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies, of the nature of which they may be unconscious" and "Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventures of the mature 'Batman' and his young friend Robin."

(Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1954. pg. 189–90)

Now, then you can say 'Yeah, but that was then', well, I'm pretty sure bullshιt still happens. A lot of 'child psychologists' of today will go out and claim that for instance swearing a lot at home or certain media is 'bad for the development of a child', however they failed to define 'bad for the development of a child' in hard terms that can be testable against research, and I've really never seen any scientific study with controlled conditions that backs up this view that if children hear words like 'fυck' or see people exercise the act linked to that word on television they some-how become mentally compromised of some sorts, for one, such a study would be unethical, what if you're right? then you've just compromised half your group of children.

Psychology for the most part is just spewing out theories that sound 'intuitive' to you and your colleagues without backing them up with experiments. Also, there are different 'schools' of psychology which often claim the inverse from the same evidence. Psychology is for the most part a pseudoscience which is as vague as astrology, there is no more evidence for types like meyers-briggs then there is for enneagrammes. Stuff that supposedly men like womwn that half large breasts and an hourglass figure is because that indicates fertility just gets accepted in journals there. Well 1: that's nurture, not nature, it's just a western cultural thing that's already well over it's peak, a lot of men already like an A cup. And 2: There hasn't been any indication whatsoever that women with larger breasts and thighs randomly are more 'fertile', as in, they can have more children, and 3: Then you still have to show that it's because of that.

Psychology is observing things which may not even be correctly observed, and then trying to concoct a nice intuitive explanation for it without the rigours of experimental verification; it's also for a large part just trying to justify popular dogma and myth with a 'scientific allure' to it.

 

[khkwang]

Psychology doesn't really seem that scientific as of now (compared to more experimentally verifiable studies), but don't demean the whole thing. It's still young and it's got to start somewhere right?

It's not like Newton said "When I throw this apple up into the air, the space-time curvature caused by both the apple and the Earth causes an apparent attraction between the two".

 

[physicsdude30]

I'm more into physics and many of the natural sciences, but I think psychology sounds interesting, so maybe I'll take a shot at this. The reason I care about this topic is everything around us is affected by how we think/act, so finding more universal patterns in the way Isaac Newton looked for patterns would be very beneficial. All of Science, which is useful for society, is also affected by our problem solving abilities, so that another reason I think studying psychology and making it more of a hard science would be helpful. Psychology is definitely more soft science compared to biology, chemistry and physics, However, from what I can tell academic psychology definitely uses the scientific method, falsification, peer-review method. To put it into context, I'm not talking about media psychology, but rather the academic peer-review territory.

Some food for thought here, if you have two groups which are the exact same and the only difference between the control and the experimental groups is an independent variable, then it would seem there's a cause-effect between that and the dependent variable. Furthering this line of thinking, although you can't directly observe thought process, you can observable behavior, which if a type of experiment can be repeated/verified over and over again then there may be something there.

Along with that, keep in mind the natural sciences study many things we've never directly seen, but allow into the Realm of Science because they're falsifiable and you can go with the explanation that fits the evidence the best. In biology they say endorphins are one of the body's natural pain killers. They'll give an experimental group a shot of endorphins and a control group a placebo, then give them a scale to rate their pain and when there's a statistically significant difference most will say that's scientific. Then they'll observe people naturally have less endorphins in them when they're experiencing more pain. "PAIN" in this situation can't be observed directly, but rather only indirectly. No matter how much they use brain scans, that still doesn't mean proof that pain exists in people other than you as an individual because all biologists/neurologists can observe is there's a correlation between brain scans and whether they act/claim they have pain. So I'd think psychology could be compared along those same lines, even if more of a soft science, but if they make falsifiable hypotheses in peer-review journals than that would be considered the scientific method. Likewise, you know in physics we have electrons and no one has any real life pictures of them, but that doesn't mean it's not reasonable to believe in them because they've been tested so much from so many angles.

I'd say psychology is a science with a real life scientific method, even if not quite as hard a science because it's not what Kuhn would call developed into the paradigmatic stage that chemistry and physics are.

 

[story645]

So I'd think psychology could be compared along those same lines, even if more of a soft science, but if they make falsifiable hypotheses in peer-review journals than that would be considered the scientific method.

I think you need to differentiate between the many different types of psychology. Neuropsychology is practically biology with some ee for good measure, and therefore has some pretty hard core experiments, as does some of the cognitive and behavioral stuff. Epidemiology, lots of social psych, and a good chunk of sociology, is pretty much applied statistics, which means that the papers are as valid as any other fields that rely heavy on statistics (which is most of them.) Then there's psychotherapy, which many of the neuro/cog/behavioral/stat/etc. psychologists hate precisely 'cause it is a field that's rife with unverifiable/untestable claims. It's slowly transitioning into a fringe element of psych, rather than a major school. Even a lot of clinical psych programs are moving away from Frued, Jung, and anything else that seems very unscientific.

although you can't directly observe thought process, you can observable behavior, which if a type of experiment can be repeated/verified over and over again then there may be something there.

EEG experiments run with about a 100 or more trials are pretty standard in cog-neuro experiments, though the presence or control and experimental groups depends on whether the experiment needs it.

 

[physicsdude30]

I think you need to differentiate between the many different types of psychology...
EEG experiments run with about a 100 or more trials are pretty standard in cog-neuro experiments, though the presence or control and experimental groups depends on whether the experiment needs it.

To put into context what I was trying to say about that, basically I talked to a biologist once who said psychology isn't a science because in biology you can directly see things like animals, leafs, cells, etc, but you can't directly see thought processes, even if they do use experimental-control studies. So that's why I made the mention that you can observe observable behavior in experimental-control studies, and that you can make many types of cognition "falsifiable". In areas of the natural sciences there are things we can't study directly, but are rigorously falsifiable through indirect observation and we can say "this is the best explanation for all of the evidence". Although the various areas of psychology are different, I'd say it depends on how they use their scientific method.

 

[physicsdude30]

Something to think about as far as figuring out if peer-review psychology uses the scientific method:

Have you ever had a time when something bad happened and someone else said, “You should have known better. It was obvious what would happen. I don’t feel bad for you," then you said there was absolutely no way you could have known it would turn out that way, and the other person kept on insisting? One side may argue people often use hindsight bias to judge others unfairly after the fact. However, others may argue that people are really good at telling if someone should have known better after the fact. As far as why we should care about what the Scientific Method may find out about this, there can be follow-up studies on how to deal with these situations and implications which may be found useful for society.

Just like in the Medical Field where they have an experimental and control group to control for third variables, I found it interesting the same thing was done to test hindsight bias in victim blaming. There were two groups of people, both whom received the same exact account of a man and woman who met at college and then went on a date, the only difference was the experimental group had an ending sentence saying the woman was raped.

Experimental group’s last sentence as independent variable:

“The next thing I knew, he raped me.”

Control group’s last sentence as independent variable:

“The next thing I knew, he took me home.”


Then the participants were given a questionnaire asking them to pretend they didn't know the ending and to judge from the details of the account how much she was setting herself up for rape. I thought the results were interesting, plus I've seen it replicated again and again in different ways:

and

If there are two groups the same, with an independent variable different, then that means there's a cause-effect relationship. Although you can't directly observe or prove 100% many things in Science, you can make it falsifiable/testable and go with the best explanation. At the very least you can directly observe that everything was the same except for the very last sentence independent variable, and the dependent variable of verbal behavior. Outside of the lab many have directly observed how people after the fact say, "She should have known better." The point of this study was to use experimental-control to see if there was a cause-effect by controlling for third variables. Although it in no way proves someone is innocent, there does appear to be cause-effect of hearing the ending and verbal behavior of how likely something was to happen (and verbally putting together the details to back oneself up in studies if they ask "why you say it that way"). Just like the natural sciences, there can be follow-up studies and falsification.

Peer-review source I used:

Janoff-Bulman, R., Timko, C., Carli, L. (1985). Cognitive Biases in Blaming the Victim. Journal of experimental social psychology, 21(2), 161-177.

 

[story645]

Just like in the Medical Field where they have an experimental and control group to control for third variables, I found it interesting the same thing was done to test hindsight bias in victim blaming.

Man, you're hanging out with the wrong psychologists if you think it's surprising that researchers would use science to test claims. The kind of study you mention isn't a novelty, it's standard and has been for ages.

In areas of the natural sciences there are things we can't study directly, but are rigorously falsifiable through indirect observation and we can say "this is the best explanation for all of the evidence".

Neuro-cog people do the same thing using EEGs, fMRIs, and a host of behavioral tests. It's really not all that different.

 

[physicsdude30]

Man, you're hanging out with the wrong psychologists if you think it's surprising that researchers would use science to test claims. The kind of study you mention isn't a novelty, it's standard and has been for ages.

I think you're understanding me out of context. That last post I made with the graphs was to the many posts on this thread which kept on saying psychology isn't science (one poster said only 5% use the scientific method). I've taken academic psychology courses which use peer-review and have looked at quite a few peer-review myself, so I just simply gave those on this thread an example to think about where an experimental-control study was used. I couldn't just say, "This is the way it is", but rather decided to be more indirect, "This is some food for thought with a reference for the graph I made." I like to treat people like independent minded intellectuals.

If you look at peer-review journal articles for physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology, it's obvious that physics/chemistry are more hard science versus soft when compared to psychology. However, it's obvious that academic peer-review psychology definitely uses the scientific method and so can be considered "scientific" even if not hard exact science like physics/chemistry. It's also obvious there are many who claim to be psychology but don't use the scientific method and are media psychology, so that's why I made the distinction earlier that it depends on the method they use. Even for academic peer-review psychology, there is a hierarchy of sciences where there are more hard vs. soft psychology in how scientific they are, just like there is with the natural versus social sciences. Psychology would also be what Kuhn may call not as paradigmatic as physics/chemistry; many would say there's a continuum of hard vs. soft facts using the scientific method, rather than black-white.

I just wanted to put what I was saying into context, since I'm not the best at doing that sometimes. Sorry for any confusion.

Neuro-cog people do the same thing using EEGs, fMRIs, and a host of behavioral tests. It's really not all that different.

When I mentioned above "Furthering this line of thinking, although you can't directly observe thought process, you can observable behavior, which if a type of experiment can be repeated/verified over and over again then there may be something there," the reason is biologists are sure to say that experiment above with the graphs isn't like biology where you can directly observe mitochondria, leaves, etc. The point I was trying to make is although that's true, many areas of the natural sciences study things not directly observed and make abstract things at the very least falsifiable and then go with the explanation that fits the evidence the best.

 

[AdVen]

The mind is like a computer. You have software (ideas) and hardware (brain). There is a fundamental difference between the two. Trying to understand behaviour in terms of ideas or motivations is a completely different story in comparison with trying to understand behaviour in terms of the things which are possible or not possible in terms of the make up of the brain. In neither of these two different realms a formal theory has come into existence. As far as I know the only exception might be inhibition theory developed to understand the consecutive reaction times in prolonged work task, go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inhibition_Theory

Inhibition theory would be an example of a formal theory of the second type of explanation. Physics as a formal science came to existence with the development of Newton's theory of gravitation (classical mechanics). The birth of a formal theory is the starting point for a science. Since in neither of these realms a formal theory has come into existence one may conclude that Psychology as a science does not yet exist. If such a theory would exist then the theory would have a name as well as the name of it's originator. Everybody knows Newton's gravitation theory or Maxwell's electromagnetic theory or Einstein's relativity theory. Do we have the name of such theory in Psychology? The answer is no.

By the way, explaining behavior by ideas is a matter of means and ends analysis, explaining behavior by the conditions of the brain is a matter of cause and effects analysis.

 

[brainstorm]

Psychology is somewhat of a science... yet sociology is just a backdrop for propaganda.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

A lot of sociology is propaganda-type knowledge that spins concepts in a way to promote certain agendas. For example, sociology textbooks will note that spending on education is less than other spending and associate that with some other social problem, but the assumption that is taken for granted is that more spending on education automatically improves the quality of education and social life in general. It would be more scientific to investigate how education funding affects education processes, but that doesn't allow for neat statistical correlations.

The sad thing about sociology is that in an effort to gain scientific credibility, many sociologists have embraced complex statistical methods that make their research appear to be rigorous and objective when in fact what these models do is distract from critically reasoning about the theoretical assumptions in the model and background theory. Naive critics will claim sociology is less scientific if it remains purely theory-based and qualitative, and this puts pressure on sociology to become less rigorously scientific by addressing relatively theoretically weak questions with complex statistical procedures - because this satisfies political and social institutions that seek to promote their agendas with sociological research. Scientism in sociology IS the reason it is propagandistic a lot of the time.

 

[AdVen]

The sad thing about sociology is that in an effort to gain scientific credibility, many sociologists have embraced complex statistical methods that make their research appear to be rigorous and objective when in fact what these models do is distract from critically reasoning about the theoretical assumptions in the model and background theory.

I cannot agree more.

 

[John Creighto]

Lots of social science is politically motivated just as some hard science is. When statics agree across multiple sources with reasonable sample sizes amounts intuitions and journals with no obvious agenda's then we can feel better about their conclusions. We can also feel better about the conclusions when the article has been in a journal for a while and has had time to stand up to criticism.


One important point in the scientific method is reproducibility. If we feel a result is biased we can examine there method and try to reproduce their results. We can also suggest improvements to the method which we feel will better remove bias.

Just because there is the potential to abuse and lie with statistics does not mean we shouldn't look for hard evidence and numbers to try to support and refute our conclusions.

 

[Phrak]

I think it would be enterprising to set up an experiment in psychology/sociology that would measure (be an appropriate definition) the degree of subjective bias that enters into conclusions of psychology/sociology. To this end, I would propose that the experiment should use Peer Expectations as the biasing agent. That is, the experiment would examine how published papers, say, are bias is such a way as to be judged worthy of positive references by others who also publish upon the same subject.

Is anyone getting the idea?

Andre has called this groupthink, and that's appropriate. (If you disagree on my interpretation of your meaning, Andre, let me know.) Those who fail to fit within the group will find themselves out of the group and out of a job in their profession of choice. And even before this, academic chances are diminished.

Anyone foolish enough to take up such an experiment, attacking one's support group, and truthfully publish the results, will find him/herself in similar straits. Been there; done that, many times, in similar circumstances.

 

[brainstorm]

I think it would be enterprising to set up an experiment in psychology/sociology that would measure (be an appropriate definition) the degree of subjective bias that enters into conclusions of psychology/sociology. To this end, I would propose that the experiment should use Peer Expectations as the biasing agent. That is, the experiment would examine how published papers, say, are bias is such a way as to be judged worthy of positive references by others who also publish upon the same subject.

Is anyone getting the idea?

Andre has called this groupthink, and that's appropriate. (If you disagree on my interpretation of your meaning, Andre, let me know.) Those who fail to fit within the group will find themselves out of the group and out of a job in their profession of choice. And even before this, academic chances are diminished.

Anyone foolish enough to take up such an experiment, attacking one's support group, and truthfully publish the results, will find him/herself in similar straits. Been there; done that, many times, in similar circumstances.

Max Weber is an early pioneer of recognizing and controlling for political and personal interests in research. Some people take his advocacy for value-freedom very superficially and think it it refers to using statistical methods that are supposed to control for researcher bias. In reality, statistics designed to appear more objective are often actually more prone to bias in that they amplify the interests behind the research questions in the first place. For example, a statistical study comparing average IQ's according to gender or ethnic categories is already biased in the direction of comparing people along those lines as opposed to, say, educational attainment, job sector, or what color car they drive. Likewise, it would contain the bias that IQ accurately measures intelligence and that average IQ of a category reflects something inherent among individuals classified as such.

I don't believe that Weber or contemporary proponents of subjectivity-research would say that bias can be eliminated from social scientific research. Instead, they would promote openness to recognizing, discovering, and disclosing biases and interests present in research. In this way, readers can themselves control for the bias by considering what interest there is in conducting certain research or publishing certain claims/findings. The simplistic response, common in public discourse imo, is to totally invalidate any research that appears to be the product of interests or contain bias - but in reality this just gives more power to the researchers who do the best job of concealing their interests and bias and giving their research the most convincing aura of objectivity.

What it comes down to, though, is that the best way to discover bias/interests in research is to analyze the (potential) effects is has or will have in discourse. Even when researchers themselves are unaware of the implications of their research or are unintentionally biased in some way, their publications can have discursive effects as if they were. This doesn't mean that the researchers are responsible for these effects, at least not necessarily or soley. Discourse involves complex interactive meaning-making and spin can take place just as much at the level of the reader as the author. Then you have to consider that in academic discourse, the reader is often using literature to ground subsequent research, so there is a lot of complexity to be mindful of.

 

[Phrak]

Nowhere do you mention cooking data, which I find very common--today even, and most rewarding. It's a lot easier to start with a goose than decorate a chicken to look like a goose with words and statistics.

Then there are cases which use no data at all, and are purely gleeful imagination.

In psychology we have hypnotic regression.
In sociology, my favorite is the Social Text/Alan Sokal exposure.

 

[brainstorm]

Nowhere do you mention cooking data, which I find very common--today even, and most rewarding. It's a lot easier to start with a goose than decorate a chicken to look like a goose with words and statistics.

Then there are cases which use no data at all, and are purely gleeful imagination.

In psychology we have hypnotic regression.
In sociology, my favorite is the Social Text/Alan Sokal exposure.

Personally, I'm not such a fan of positivism in social science. I find the theoretical assumptions underpinning social research more interesting than the findings. Why is it, for example, that human individuals are able to identify with demographic data or statistical correlations? In reality, the people who are interested in sociological data about "society" are usually actually interested in understanding themselves or others as individuals, but they are uncomfortable with doing it directly so they look at "populations" instead. Ultimately, most correlations between variables translate into personality questions that really must be understood at the individual level for true validity. Yes, there are institutionalized cultural patterns that influence individuals such that their development is not totally independent of socialization, but the best way to understand these is to study culture directly, imo. Too many sociologists try to start with average behavioral or thought patterns and work their way to understanding cultural institutions, when what they should be doing is using theory to extrapolate and hypothesize what cultural institutions there are and how they work. Then they can move to the level of how individuals acquire and customize cultural resources through interpersonal and other kinds of interaction.

 

[Phrak]

Personally, I'm not such a fan of positivism in social science.

Now this is what I'm talking about. There are -Isms. They have advocates. These advocates are -Ists. And this is where we part company, because no matter how many words are throw about, it doesn't change what is.

 

[brainstorm]

Now this is what I'm talking about. There are -Isms. They have advocates. These advocates are -Ists. And this is where we part company, because no matter how many words are throw about, it doesn't change what is.

Doesn't change what what is? What I meant by "positivism" is research that treats society as an object to be studied, described, and explained as if it existed transparently without being actively modeled in one way or another. I have absolutely no interest in comparing and contrasting "positivists" and "anti-positivists," "post-positivists," "neo-positivists" or ascribing any other label of classificatory mutual-exclusivity to any research or researchers. All forms of research contain positivist elements since it is hardly possible to completely avoid objectifying social life in some way or other in order to study "it."

My point about criticizing positivism is that it can be uncritical when researchers treat social life, institutions, identities, etc. as simply being objects to be studied the same as physical matter. Remember human bodies are made out of matter, buildings and infrastructure are made out of matter, and material artifacts are made out of matter - but social facts are the product of interaction on the basis of opinions, beliefs, and attitudes. As such they do not exist as objects but as actions or assemblages of multiple actions.

Social facts, thus, are not actual facts in the sense that they exist. Only human actions and attitudes toward their belief in them are empirically observable. As a theist, you can believe in God as a reality, but as a sociologist you have to distinguish between God's existence as a social fact and the objective/material fact of the human expression that occur in response to the belief (or disbelief) in "God."

It is important to realize that in the pursuit of a unique set of research objects for sociology to claim as its disciplinary monopoly, Durheim(ians) have construed social facts as real artifacts for study as if they were empirically observables. Additionally, sociology has come up with various methodologies that construe social life in terms of the social facts construed by sociologists and non-sociologists, such as "societies" "populations" "economies" "nations" "families" etc. In doing so it has, with the exception of constructionism, failed to adequately distinguish between social facts and material facts.

For this reason, sociology has the general weakness of reproducing the subjective assumptions present in the people it studies and those who study them, and this is more confounding when the research is couched in the guise of objective survey and measurement of social facts without sufficient theoretical rigor regarding the physicalities of actual interactions between individual organisms.

 

[Moonbear]

There is no such subject as "social science." Rather, there are a collective group of subjects all lumped together as social sciences. Do those fields rigorously follow scientific method? I don't know. I don't study any of them in depth enough to be fully familiar with their methodologies.

As for psychology, though, yes, that is a science. However, there is also a slowly decreasing schism in psychology between those who are rigorously scientific in their approach to the subject, including developing hypotheses and conducting experiments to test them, and those who stop pretty much at observing behavior and sometimes drawing less than scientific conclusions based on observations and correlations. Those embracing the more rigorous scientific side of the field are growing rapidly in number, while the rest sort of cling on as "dinosaurs."

Pengwuino makes a good point as well, that there are pretty big limitations to designing psychology experiments. It doesn't make it less scientific of a field, it just means that many questions have to remain unanswered, or insufficiently answered, because conducting an experiment that truly tested it would be considered unethical.

 

[brainstorm]

It is actually possible to subject any form of social research to critical scrutiny in order to assess what is more or less valid about it. The problem is that there is an enormous about of discourse designed to obscure simple criticism. For example, if you criticize any individual piece of research, you will receive challenges about whether you have expertise in a "larger body" of research that the individual research project is "part of." That way, anyone who lucidly scrutinizes and criticizes any single piece of research can be challenged to either jump through all the hoops of becoming an expert in a particular sub-field or cease and desist. Then, of course, most people who make it through all the hoop-jumping that establishes them as a bona-fide expert in such a sub-field has acquired a significant interest in protecting that sub-field from being blatantly undermined, which gives you the catch-22 situation that prevents most social science approaches, as well as many non-social sciences, from being seriously criticized and undermined except by so-labeled "outsiders" who get chastised by the skilled defenders of whatever they criticize. The result is that those who aren't skilled at defending their (sub)fields can be shielded from attack except through breaking down the means of funding, which is of course nearly impossible since there is always someone promoting any field that has achieved enough social momentum to become established across a multiplicity of institutions/departments.

 

[rhit2013]

Here, maybe this will help a little. "What is the definition of science?" Answer that and you'll quickly answer your question too.

 

[brainstorm]

Here, maybe this will help a little. "What is the definition of science?" Answer that and you'll quickly answer your question too.

One way to define science is by defining what it's not. One thing it is not is what you're trying to do here, i.e. creating a definitional identity and then establishing whether something "fits" that identity or not. Science is primarily done by rigorous critical and empirical questioning of established knowledge. Science is the opposite of dogma. Scientific knowledge can become dogmatic, which is what creates much of the confusion about what is and isn't science. Few people can seem to understand that good scientific knowledge can become religious dogma when it becomes the object of worship and anti-critique. The law of gravity may be air-tight, but the moment people start persecuting others for daring to question it or subject it to empirical testing, it's no longer science but defensive religion.

 

[Speldosa]

Well, the whole area of psychology is to broadly defined for one to actually being able to say something general about in what extent people adhere to the scientific method within it.

I've read psychology for quite some time now, however, I would say that my area (cognitive psychology/neuropsychology) is very different from more therapeutic research within the field, and I would say that it's in the latter that most of the pseudoscience is going on.

I mean, even though one can ask whether the constructs being made to measure something in many studies are meaningful (it's easier to know what is relevant when it comes to for example physics, and the building of a rocket that should be able to go into space), once you've defined your concepts, I would say that most research is very much scientific within the field of psychology (at least within the part of it I'm familiar with, that is).

 

[heusdens]

If you come from the arrogant perspective of some physicists, which proclaim that physics is the ONLY science, the rest is stamp collecting, then social sciences and psychology isn't a science. Yet, I don't think that that arrogant position is justified, and our scientific methods in such fields have increased dramatically. Our psychology can now be tested directly under an MRI-scanner, we might indeed at some time directly "read" our minds and psychological structure, so it will become more and more an exact science.

 

[unmovedmover]

Don't forget theoretical physics can get very speculative too..

 

[brainstorm]

Don't forget theoretical physics can get very speculative too..

The only kind of "science" that isn't speculative is science whose history has been documented and validated according to academic authorities. The actual practice of scientific thought and experimentation is always speculative in some manner, even if it is just repeating a known procedure to verify results. Beyond that, some modification of experimental designs and/or theoretical parameters is the basis of progress. Nevertheless, the academic model of "learning existing knowledge" reframes science as its history so that students can study approaches and models that have had successful results. This is somewhat confounding, imo, in that students come to see good science as a final product instead of a critical process. The point isn't whether thought is speculative or not, it is the critical rigor in the speculation that matters. Speculating that the universe might have been created by unicorns because you think it's a neat idea isn't a rigorous thought experiment. Speculating that particles or light behave a certain way in order to flesh out the implications to compare them with known observations is more scientific.

The same kinds of rigor can be applied in social science thought. Social science will never deliver perfect law-like predictions because of human creativity and free will, but that is not really the point of science. If anything, the point of science is to establish when and how something behaves deterministically and when it doesn't. Then, science goes on to theorize and test explanations and predictions in a way that attempts to produce ever better models of the phenomena in question. If physicists think social science is soft because humans don't behave as deterministically as atoms, then they are really just shirking the scientific project of dealing with this fundamental aspect of human behavior and rigorously pursuing models that work better than mechanical determinism - which social science has been working on in rigorous ways for quite a while now.

 

[unmovedmover]

The only kind of "science" that isn't speculative is science whose history has been documented and validated according to academic authorities. The actual practice of scientific thought and experimentation is always speculative in some manner, even if it is just repeating a known procedure to verify results. Beyond that, some modification of experimental designs and/or theoretical parameters is the basis of progress. Nevertheless, the academic model of "learning existing knowledge" reframes science as its history so that students can study approaches and models that have had successful results. This is somewhat confounding, imo, in that students come to see good science as a final product instead of a critical process. The point isn't whether thought is speculative or not, it is the critical rigor in the speculation that matters. Speculating that the universe might have been created by unicorns because you think it's a neat idea isn't a rigorous thought experiment. Speculating that particles or light behave a certain way in order to flesh out the implications to compare them with known observations is more scientific.

The same kinds of rigor can be applied in social science thought. Social science will never deliver perfect law-like predictions because of human creativity and free will, but that is not really the point of science. If anything, the point of science is to establish when and how something behaves deterministically and when it doesn't. Then, science goes on to theorize and test explanations and predictions in a way that attempts to produce ever better models of the phenomena in question. If physicists think social science is soft because humans don't behave as deterministically as atoms, then they are really just shirking the scientific project of dealing with this fundamental aspect of human behavior and rigorously pursuing models that work better than mechanical determinism - which social science has been working on in rigorous ways for quite a while now.

I totally agree. Speculation is really how we got where we are today. I did not mean speculation in a sense similar to speculation in the financial market. I meant in a philosophical sense. That is, PURE REASONING. Which I think is what you meant by speculation too right? As to theories that have not been "validated", they are still science as long as they have falsifiability. There are no right number of positive outcomes that can affirm the proposition, but one negative outcome can be enough to raise doubts on the proposition. I definitely agree that social sciences are legit sciences.

 

[brainstorm]

I totally agree. Speculation is really how we got where we are today. I did not mean speculation in a sense similar to speculation in the financial market. I meant in a philosophical sense. That is, PURE REASONING. Which I think is what you meant by speculation too right? As to theories that have not been "validated", they are still science as long as they have falsifiability. There are no right number of positive outcomes that can affirm the proposition, but one negative outcome can be enough to raise doubts on the proposition. I definitely agree that social sciences are legit sciences.

I disagree that falsifiability automatically validates any theory. Sometimes falsifiable theories are flawed in their premises and operational definitions, etc. in such a way that they present themselves as falsifiable on the basis of poor assumptions. In statistical social science, for example, it is common to make a subjective assumption that all individuals assigned to a particular population will be homogenous outside of the variables that differentiate them. So, for example, statistical research that generates a certain probably for a disease, say lung cancer, as it correlates with a variable like smoking is assuming that rates for all can be transparently distributed to each in terms of a probability of occurrence. For one thing, this is not falsifiable at the individual level, because no individual was ever claimed to be predicted by the population model overall - but because the population as a whole is taken as the research object, falsifiable propositions can be made at that level without any concern about the interface between dynamics/mechanics at the population level and those at the individual or interactive levels. What makes matters worse is that measurement actually precedes theorizing in some types of research, so non-falsifiability at the methodological level gets completely ignored in favor of focussing on the research at the meta-data level. Imo, the use of statistics and macro-scale approaches generally in social science has prevented it from ever theorizing at an empirically concise level, and the problem is only exacerbated by the fact that every attempt to rigorously theorize at the level of individual-interactions is usually criticized as being qualitative instead of quantitative.

So sociologists cling to statistics to gain mathematical credibility, when the type of modeling needed to measure social life at this level actually obfuscates the interactional dynamics at the empirical level. It's not a question of falsifiability yet at that point. It's just a question of establishing the empirical rigor of the data and how it is framed and analyzed.

 

[tjfloyd]

Yes, these both are sciences, but a different kind of science (hence the name "Social" science). We have natural science.. and then social science.. When you're dealing with the social, it's a whole different ball game. Social sciences are highly theoretical fields; they have many theories that can be somewhat proven, but can also be falsified by other theories. Take for example functionalism and conflict theory in sociology.. it is true that society is functional, because x contributes to y, and y contributes to z, and if it wasn't for z, then a couldn't perform its function... but it also conflicts; the higher social classes are more dominant over the lower social classes and whatnot.. Chaos theory has also developed significantly over the last century as well... and many studies into chaos in the social sciences have been done.. This is a good example.. Meteorology.. can we REALLY predict the weather?? Last week the weatherman said it's supposed to rain, but now he's changed it and said we're going to get snow.. this phenomenon is chaos.. so, similarly, the social sciences are full of chaos.. Can we predict economic cycles?? Can we predict what next year's trend will be?? I believe that's why the social sciences exist.. because the natural sciences, for some people, just aren't enough.. it's not as theoretical and interesting as people is.. doesn't everybody want to know why people behave as they do?? The natural sciences have been around for centuries, but the social sciences have only been around for a couple hundred years.. it took medicine a couple thousand years to get to where it is now.. same goes for social sciences.. we're just in our infancy.

 

[Curd]

Maybe it's just me, but it seems that more often than not people in the fields of psychology and social sciences will abuse the scientific method in order to justify their own inane BS. Am I right or wrong? Please explain, thanks.

if all the rulers are subjective then how can anything be measured by them? (the rulers in psychology would be people basically).