Comment by lutusp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lutusp | Hacker News Reader

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>> I wish they would stop calling this "science". It's embarrassing to real science and scientists.

> I'm curious why you say this.

Because it's not science?

> And if they are able to reliably induce that sensation in people through that situation, then I think it's worth investigating why.

Yes, but psychologists never seem to get around to asking "why", only "what". There's a bit more to science than observing interesting phenomena and publishing descriptions. Psychology is in the midst of a historical upheaval because they only describe things and don't try to shape theories -- explanations -- about what they describe.

Scientists eventually get around to crafting theories about their observations -- theories that can be applied to new observations, that predict things not yet observed, and that can be falsified by new evidence. Psychologists don't do that -- over a period of decades, psychologists has given up on theory-shaping and now limit themselves to observing and reporting what they observed.

And the chickens are coming home to roost. The director of the NIMH has recently decided to phase out the DSM, psychology's "bible" and a central authority for psychological clinical work, on the ground that it's not scientific:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-dia...

A quote: "While DSM has been described as a “Bible” for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity."

In the long term, neuroscience will produce the sorts of explanations -- theories -- that psychology seems unable to produce. That time hasn't arrived, but current events suggest it's not too soon to begin to phase out psychology's failed effort to craft a theory of mind.

But psychologist do have theories-of-the-mind to try to describe why we end up thinking the things that we do. They are not complete, but it's not like they're not trying at all. And while there is more to science than publishing descriptions, it is still part of science.

I think that not limiting research to the DSM makes sense. The DSM is a clinical tool. It is necessarily a symptom-based descriptions of mental disorders. Steven Novella of Science Based Medicine explains this quite well: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dsm-5-and-the-fight-for-...

(I actually heard this line of talk from him on the podcast The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, on which he is the host: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/)

> But psychologist do have theories-of-the-mind to try to describe why we end up thinking the things that we do.

That's false. Psycholgists and psychiatrists do not craft or test falsifiable scientific theories -- they publish descriptions without explanations.

> They are not complete ...

They're not scientific. They lack essential properties that a scientific theory most have, primarily falsifiability, but including the ability to predict observations not yet made, and the ability to produce consensus -- accepted principles -- among different workers in the same field. Psychologists and psychiatrists famously disagree on even the most basic things. Tom Widiger, who served as head of research for DSM-IV, says "There are lots of studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one particular disorder and really don't systematically assess for other disorders. They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in treating and believe that most of their patients have."

> And while there is more to science than publishing descriptions, it is still part of science.

Not without falsifiable theories. Remember that falsifiability -- a practical way to compare ideas to reality and abandon ideas that fail the test -- is essential to science.

The difference between psychology and astrology is that astrology has clearly stated theories, theories that have been tested and found wanting.

> That's false. Psycholgists and psychiatrists do not craft or test falsifiable scientific theories -- they publish descriptions without explanations.

You know nothing about the current state of psychological research and should stop posting.

> You know nothing about the current state of psychological research and should stop posting.

A productive argument. You may be surprised to learn that the current director of the NIMH shares my views and is acting on them:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-s...

Quote: "When Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, came out swinging with his critiques of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a couple of weeks ago, longtime critics of psychiatry were shocked and gratified. Insel announced that that the D.S.M.’s diagnostic categories lacked validity, that they were not “based on any objective measures,” and that, “unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma or AIDS,” which are grounded in biology, they were nothing more than constructs put together by committees of experts. America’s psychiatrist-in-chief seemed to be reiterating what many had been saying all along: that psychiatry was a pseudoscience, unworthy of inclusion in the medical kingdom."

Maybe Insel should take your sage advice and "stop posting" as well. Or maybe you could learn a bit more about this topic.

You know, when you post links to the articles you quote from, people can read them and see if the opinions expressed support your thesis. In this case you're posting an article where the NIMH director wonders aloud whether a diagnostic manual hasn't become the proverbial territory itself. Much, much less strong of a claim than yours.

Second, your original claim is that this research posted here today is empty, navel-gazing non-science. And still your efforts to show that this claim is true are also wanting, but not for a lack of heat and bluster.

> In this case you're posting an article where the NIMH director wonders aloud whether a diagnostic manual hasn't become the proverbial territory itself.

The director isn't merely "wonder[ing] aloud", has has announced his intention to phase out the DSM entirely, replace it with a more evidence-based approach, one that tries to explain, rather than merely describe. In other words, he's saying what I say in this thread.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/the-s...

Quote: "When Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, came out swinging with his critiques of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a couple of weeks ago, longtime critics of psychiatry were shocked and gratified. Insel announced that that the D.S.M.’s diagnostic categories lacked validity, that they were not “based on any objective measures,” and that, “unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma or AIDS,” which are grounded in biology, they were nothing more than constructs put together by committees of experts. America’s psychiatrist-in-chief seemed to be reiterating what many had been saying all along: that psychiatry was a pseudoscience, unworthy of inclusion in the medical kingdom."

In case you're wondering how the current discussion conflates the DSM, a mere book, with psychiatry and psychology, large established fields, it's because the DSM is to psychiatry and psychology what the Standard Model is to physics -- it represents a distillation of research efforts spanning decades. Therefore to reject the DSM is to reject psychiatry and psychology as serious science.

> ... your original claim is that this research posted here today is empty, navel-gazing non-science.

I suggest that you limit yourself to things I've actually said. But, without either producing a new, empirical, testable theory, or comparing the outcome to an existing theory, the article can only describe the sort of instantly forgettable observation that plagues modern psychological research. That's what's wrong with modern psychological research -- it doesn't lead to consensus, to established principles, principles that might turn psychology into a science.

> You may be surprised to learn that the current director of the NIMH shares my views and is acting on them:

Appeal to authority does not make a valid argument. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with your position here - only pointing out that repeatedly posting that the NIMH director agrees with you doesn't lend credence to your arguments.

>> You may be surprised to learn that the current director of the NIMH shares my views and is acting on them

> Appeal to authority does not make a valid argument.

Then it's a good thing I didn't make an appeal to authority. My reason for mentioning the director's position and actions is because this issue has a political dimension as well as a technical one.

By addressing the ongoing political changes, the director's comments add substance to the discussion, not to any imagined intellectual authority. If I say that psychology isn't a science, reference to the views of the director of the NIMH is hardly worthwhile. If I say that society is abandoning psychiatry and psychology, the same reference is immensely relevant.

> ... repeatedly posting that the NIMH director agrees with you doesn't lend credence to your arguments.

Only if I don't argue that psychiatry and psychology are being abandoned for cause, something I say regularly.

And finally, in a thread that includes such non-arguments as "you should stop posting", the fact that others share my views is entirely germane.

You're wrong on several accounts, but the easiest to pick out is: The DSM is psychiatry's bible, not psychology. They are two separate fields.

Here's the psychology English wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology

> You're wrong on several accounts, but the easiest to pick out is: The DSM is psychiatry's bible, not psychology.

Clinical psychologists rely on the authority of the DSM, as do psychiatrists. The DSM is the central authority in both fields. If you are still confused, read this:

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/04/dsm.aspx

Quote: "After a 14-year revision process and a lot of contentiousness, the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) debuts May 22. What changes will affect psychologists?"

> They are two separate fields.

They both depend on the authority of psychology, the study of the mind. Would you argue that particle physics isn't physics on the ground that it isn't cosmology?

The APA recognizes 54 subfields within psychology. Will you now argue that each of them is a separate field? I ask because I've heard that one before -- I've heard it argued that, if any of them is scientific, then all of them are. But science doesn't work that way.

> Here's the psychology English wikipedia page ...

I'm very familiar with that page. In an article I once quoted its definition of psychology -- "the study of the mind, partly through the study of behavior". I compared that to Wikipedia's definition of neuroscience -- "the scientific study of the nervous system." Within hours of the appearance of my article, someone added "scientific" to the definition of psychology. If only science could be that simple.

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