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Comment by jamp897 | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why this is on HN, since psycology isn’t a science in its current form:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-...

> Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability.

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I don't really get why comments like this continue to pop up on HN. There are many non-science topics that make their way to the front page of HN regularly. Per the guidelines, on-topic submissions do not need to strictly be about programming, startups, or in this case, science.

Its usually always people who have been here for like 10 minutes.

HN isn't limited to solely science articles. Anything submitted and found interesting to the community is of course welcome.

I'm not a psychologist but to my knowledge the study of the subject is to a large part statistics which is seems pretty much there to cover these points.

It’s satstics applied to cultural anthropology in its current form, it doesn’t have a hard underpinning and changes from culture to culture. So it’s just relative opinions most of the time.

No idea, I didn't study that but I'm sure they are very transparent when referencing external sources or when generating new knowledge. Speaking about history, already when browsing a source like Wikipedia it becomes quickly apparent which things actually happened e.g. like when the UN was founded and things which are difficult to see like for instance what happened with JFK.

Also it seems mysterious to me how to apply statistics in this, especially speaking about definition of probability and applying it to seems that actually happened or not - in contrast to future events or thought experiments.

Perhaps people don't think that psychologists are very capable (and thus not worrisome), but I am worried about whatever science will develop from watching people behave and trying to get them to act against their own interests in the market and in politics.

And of course the science of making people behave at large, which I suspect is taking place already.

But HN is not only for science, is it?

It’s not about pretend science IMO.

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