{"id":27604,"date":"2017-03-30T05:45:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T09:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=27604"},"modified":"2017-03-29T21:29:29","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T01:29:29","slug":"does-the-scientific-method-apply-to-psychology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2017\/03\/does-the-scientific-method-apply-to-psychology\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the scientific method apply to psychology?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"imprisoned-2066638_640\"<\/a>We\u2019ve blogged about the problem <\/a>in the field of psychology that so many of their research experiments can\u2019t be replicated. \u00a0That means that, according to the scientific method, they are invalid.<\/p>\n

The problem continues, and it\u2019s compounded by the fact that the profession doesn\u2019t seem to care!<\/p>\n

The proliferation of peer-reviewed articles whose results can\u2019t be repeated keeps building. \u00a0Despite these findings, nothing is changing in the way psychologists do their research, the way journals vet their articles, or in the articles that get published.<\/p>\n

\n

An article on the subject, quoted and linked after the jump, says that as many as two-thirds of psychology articles \u201ccan\u2019t be trusted.\u201d<\/p>\n

But let me pose a different way to look at this problem. \u00a0Can it be that the same scientific method used for\u00a0chemistry and biology is unusable in the study of the minds of human beings? \u00a0People are active agents, not inanimate objects that follow only natural laws. \u00a0So it\u2019s no wonder human beings are unpredictable and inconsistent. \u00a0And different subjects and groups react in different ways.<\/p>\n

After I quote the article, I quote a commenter, who points out that there may be other ways to design, evaluate, and learn from various kinds of research, in addition to strict application of \u201cthe scientific method.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the view that the scientific method is the only<\/em> way to know truth\u2013not logical reasoning (as in philosophy) and certainly not revelation (as in theology)\u2013is surely one of the more reductionist errors of the Enlightenment.<\/p>\n

I have no problem jettisoning 2\/3 of the published research in experimental psychology\u2013though it would help to know which 2\/3\u2013and the lack of response of the professionals in the field is inexcusable. \u00a0But maybe what all of this proves, with an abundance of replication, is the protean quality of the human psyche. And that\u00a0would be an important scientific finding. \u00a0It would even be empirical and replicable.<\/p>\n

From Ross Pomeroy,\u00a0<\/span>Is Psychology Full of Undead Theories? | RealClearScience<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

Science is embattled in a raging replication crisis<\/a>, in which researchers are unable to reproduce a number of key findings. On the front lines of this conflict is psychology. In a 2015 review of 98 original psychology papers<\/a>, just 36 percent of attempted replications returned significant results, whereas 97 percent of the original studies did.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t trust everything you read in the psychology literature,\u201d reporter Monya Baker warned. \u201cIn fact, two thirds of it should probably be distrusted.\u201d<\/p>\n

How did psychology reach such a sorry state of affairs? Back in 2012, when the replication crisis was just beginning to gain prominence in the popular media, psychology professors Moritz Heene and Christopher Ferguson, respectively from Ludwig Maximilian University and Stetson University, offered a blunt, upsetting hypothesis: The field is sliding towards a state of being unfalsifiable, and its adherents either don\u2019t notice or don\u2019t seem to care.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . .]<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But also read this comment from school psychologist Peter Dan:<\/p>\n

You write that\u201dThe field is sliding towards a state of being unfalsifiable\u201d That is precisely the problem: the rigid adherence to the \u201cscientific method\u201d and ever more complicated experimental designs whose only purpose is to try to lay claim of having advanced the theory a little bit. The most influential theories in Psychology, namely Freud\u2019s or Piaget\u2019s were based on case studies, the wekest of all designs. The most influential experiments. like Milgram\u2019s obedience studies or Zimbardo\u2019s Stanford Prison experiment have the simplest design and little -if any- statistical treatements. There are other means of validating a theory for example generativity (how many new ideas did the theory generate) and potdiction (how many previously unexplained phenomena can be explained by the theory) As someone who has been a practicing psychologist for 40 years (and teaching at the graduate level for 20) I value theories to the extent they contribute to the interpretive schematas I use to integrate my findings. Being familiar with a variety of theories helps in developing a more flexible and complex understanding of others\u2019 behavior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Illustration by bykst, Pixabay, CC0, Public Domain<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve blogged about the problem in the field of psychology that so many of their research experiments can\u2019t be replicated. \u00a0That means that, according to the scientific method, they are invalid. The problem continues, and it\u2019s compounded by the fact that the profession doesn\u2019t seem to care! The proliferation of peer-reviewed articles whose results can\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,40,42],"tags":[4351,3369,1973],"class_list":["post-27604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","category-science","category-social-science","tag-psychology","tag-replication","tag-scientific-method"],"yoast_head":"\nDoes the scientific method apply to psychology?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As many as two-thirds of psychology experiments can't be replicated. 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