I wanted to send you a link from a forum ... that I'm a member of, and where I brought you up and your take on psychology. I think it cleared up my view a little on the issue. However interesting I found your articles on the topic, I have to disagree with a few. It would have been interesting to hear which points you disagreed with. I know that you've stated that neuroscience will basically be able to replace psychology at some point and how dubious a subject-field it is. A couple of posts in the thread take on that point. I also want to bring up a quote related to a one of the comments in the thread: 'Perception contains interior and exterior modalities, or Wilber’s solution to the Mind-Body Problem in philosophy. You can cut open someone’s brain, track the neurons firing when they think about a cat, but which is real, the neurons firing or the thought about the cat? It depends who you ask.' Not really — neuroscience may be unimaginative compared to mind studies, but in exchange it doesn't rely on opinion, it relies on repeatable measurements. We might not be able to reconstruct a person's subjective experience by measuring brainwaves or scanning the brain in 3D, but the advantage of brain science is that it's empirical — every similarly equipped observer measures the same thing. This greatly reduces the level of confusion at the experimental level compared to mind studies.

People can pretend to have PTSD, or pretend not to if they prefer that outcome, because it's about the mind, not the brain. Psychologists can hand out Asperger Syndrome diagnoses or withhold them, depending on unrelated factors like the popularity of the diagnosis, because it's about the mind, not the brain.

People can report that they recently remembered they were brutally raped years ago but suppressed the memory, as in Recovered Memory Therapy, then, after the imaginary criminals are jailed, realize they were talked into their memories by a psychologist, because it's about the mind, not the brain.

By studying the brain, we can craft scientific theories and put neuroscience on a reliable theoretical foundation. We cannot do this by studying the mind, because the mind inconveniences us by not existing.

The drawback to brain studies is that it relies less on vivid imagination and more on comparatively boring, repeatable, direct measurements than mind studies do. That's also its advantage.

[ This is a forward from a psychology discussion group. ]

I'm going to quote [deleted to assure privacy], since I think he put it better than I could:

"Psychologist have reproduced the same/statistically similar results in studies thousands and thousands of times. Yes, and every time an astrologer casts a chart for a given birthdate, it comes out the same. This means getting the same result over and over for a given experiment doesn't by itself make the result science.

What psychologists don't do is shape theories about their research — theories that can be tested, theories that would force all psychologists onto the same page, theories that might turn psychology into a science.

There are many, many perfectly scientific psychological studies, conducted efficiently and with discipline. What psychology doesn't have are central, defining theories on which all psychologists agree, that could turn the field into a science — the kinds of theories that define all legitimate sciences: for biology, evolution, natural selection, cell biology, genetics. For physics, the Standard Model, relativity, cosmology, particle physics. For medicine, theories about germs and epidemics — as well as some theories it shares with biology. It's true that some studies produce contradictory results some of the times, but that's often because the experiments were set up differently, they were carried out poorly, or the hypothesis is unreliable. This is true for biology or physics as well. It's not the failed experiments that make physics and biology sciences — it's the successes, the experiments that becomes theories, the theories that go on to define those fields.

Psychology doesn't have any of those. Psychology is completely Balkanized by an inability to settle on general psychological principles, in the way that relativity unites physics, and evolution unites biology. They have documented hundreds of times where chemists or physicists unconsciously affect the results of their own experiments and come up with contradictory information. See above. And yes, psychology is considered a "soft" science. Hold on — science isn't an ice cream store with hard ice cream and soft ice cream. In the science store there's just one flavor — its ingredients are evidence, testable theories, and the essential ingredient of falsifiability. For scientific fields (as opposed to scientific studies), the requirements are similar, except that fields are defined by tested, reliable, falsifiable theories — the kind of theories that don't exist in psychology. But I think the criticisms of soft sciences is ridiculous. People think that just because something can't be objectively measured, it must not be true, or it must be useless. That's not the problem. The problem is not that someone can or cannot claim that a practice is useful. The problem is there is no scientific basis for demonstrating that fact. Once someone tries to claim that a given practice is "useful" but without evidence on which different practitioners can agree, it is in that moment that the field leaves the domain of science. In psychology, for lack of science to back up claims of utility, there are as many fiefdoms as there are laboratories, and they often don't even talk to each other.

As a result, there are endless examples in which different groups of psychologists come to completely opposite conclusions about the same behavior, refuse to read their own literature, then start schools of "thought" that flatly contradict each other. Here's an example — one promising new school of thought is called Grit (personality_trait)

A quote: "Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective."

So based on that, it seems that a concert violinist is more likely to be successful if he focuses his attention on playing the violin for hours or days, as opposed to taking a walk in the park, to the exclusion of other activities, in furtherance of his personal goal. Someone like Albert Einstein is a classic "Grit" success story — he spent years and nearly ruined his health in devoted focus on one goal — his theory of relativity.

Admirable, yes? Not necessarily. Here's another school of thought — Asperger Syndrome

A quote: "Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger's syndrome or Asperger disorder, is an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests."

Wait, what? Did I read that right? The same behavior — devoted focus and absorption in one pursuit, celebrated by the "Grit" contingent, will get you diagnosed with a mental illness by the Asperger's contingent. And guess which historical figure has been branded an AS sufferer? Einstein, of course.

Psychology will not become a science unless and until its practitioners shape, and then test, general principles of human mental functioning, until all its practitioners agree on what the field actually means, until it has testable content that is not a matter of opinion. Until people aren't thrown in jail for imaginary sex crimes (Recovered memory Therapy). And until evidence ranks higher than eminence. This is ridiculous. Otherwise, you may as well walk around and say, "I didn't like cereal today, but my dopamine recepters signaled satisfaction to me." Or "I didn't have sex, my testosterone spiked and signalled it was time for sexual activity." Measuring people's subjective experiences (and yes, surveys can suck, but no they're not the only way) can be incredibly useful, and I would argue, at times even MORE useful, than finding the neurological reasons something is happening. Oh, do feel free to argue. But as a scientist, I rank evidence above argument. Your claim that a given practice is "useful", however persuasive, means nothing without scientific evidence. And this is more than a philosophical point — medical insurers are eventually going to stop paying for treatments that have no basis in scientific evidence. For instance, clinical psychologists have known for over a century that talking about your problems make the pain or intensity of the emotions less and makes you feel better. Yes, it's something called the Placebo Effect. Prove this wrong using science — prove that the fact that all therapies produce the same result, is not strong evidence for the Placebo Effect, and counterevidence for the often-heard claim that these individual therapies actually mean anything apart from the simple and therapeutic pleasure of conversation. Recently, neurologists discovered ... Do avoid trying to use neuroscience to support psychological ideas. Neuroscience is a science on the ground that it studies the brain, a physical organ. Psychology studies the mind, which inconveniences the field by not existing (in the way the brain exists) and by not being accessible to empirical study. ... that speaking about feelings activates the neo-cortex and overrides the amygdala — where much of the fear and painful emotions are felt. This suggests that *drum roll* talking about your painful emotions will lessen the intensity of which you feel them — ta da! I am perpetually amazed by what psychologists think constitutes science. Do the terms "control group" and "double-blind experiment" sound familiar? Drum roll, ta-da, show me the evidence that arose in a disciplined, replicated study with a control group and double-blind precautions. Show me such a study that both clinical psychologists and psychiatrists accept without reservation, and that survives replication.

One final comment. In 1964, two researchers at Bell Labs tried to rid their microwave dish of an annoying noise. But, even though they chased birds away and painted and scrubbed, they didn't locate the source of the noise. They had a signal without an explanation.

Meanwhile, in a nearby university, a group of cosmologists realized that evidence for the Big Bang theory might be in the form of a microwave signal coming from every direction. They didn't have a microwave dish to test their idea, which meant they had an explanation without a signal.

One day the Bell Labs people called the university people and asked about the annoying noise in their dish.

This is a first-rate scientific story, indeed one of the best. Bell labs had a dish but no theory. The university people had a theory but no dish. The two groups connected, and the reason this connection led to a new, very important discovery (and some Nobel Prizes) was because both the Bell labs people, and the university people, had a common theoretical framework that made meaningful cooperation possible. They were on the same scientific page. They were interested only in resolving a shared theoretical issue — meaning they were scientists.

Psychology doesn't work this way. If it ever does, if different groups of psychologists should actually communicate and cooperate, if (as just one example) the "Grit" and Asperger's contingents should ever be willing to talk to each other, at that point psychology might earn the right to call itself a science, and deserve a public trust that it hasn't yet earned.

Now read some science

It's where you start saying that we should advance completely without the field because of these faults that I get skeptical - if that is the claim you're making. Wait — I didn't say that. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institutes of Mental Health, said that in his article Faulty Circuits (Scientific American, 2010).

A quote: "In most areas of medicine, doctors have historically tried to glean something about the underlying cause of a patient’s illness before figuring out a treatment that addresses the source of the problem. When it came to mental or behavioral disorders in the past, however, no physical cause was detectable so the problem was long assumed by doctors to be solely “mental,” and psychological therapies followed suit.

Today scientific approaches based on modern biology, neuroscience and genomics are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories, yielding new approaches to the treatment of mental illnesses."

In the above quotation I draw your attention to the phrase "scientific approaches ... are replacing nearly a century of purely psychological theories".

And Ronald L. Levant, the past president of the American Psychological Association, said that, in his position paper Evidence-based practice in psychology (APA, 2005) .

A quote: "Some APA members have asked me why I have chosen to sponsor an APA Presidential Initiative on Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) in Psychology, expressing fears that the results might be used against psychologists by managed-care companies and malpractice lawyers ... psychology needs to define EBP in psychology or it will be defined for us."

In case you didn't follow that 2005 episode, Levant's initiative was shouted down by the APA rank and file, who flatly rejected the suggestion that psychology might adopt evidence-based methods and move a bit toward science.

You're not disputing my position, you're disputing the position of the opinion leaders in the field of psychology. Again, neuroscience can make very little headway without psychology. Nonsense. Why would neuroscience try to integrate its scientific activities with an unscientific field? But again, this is not my view — here is the degree to which neuroscience depends on psychology: Identification of risk loci with shared effects on five major psychiatric disorders: a genome-wide analysis (Lancet, 2013).

A quote: "These results provide evidence relevant to the goal of moving beyond descriptive syndromes in psychiatry, and towards a nosology informed by disease cause."

In the above Lancet article's abstract, I draw your attention to the phrase "moving beyond descriptive syndromes in psychiatry ..." Do you understand what that means? It means neuroscientists intend to abandon psychology's methods and replace them with a more scientific approach, one based on direct physical evidence. And it corresponds with NIMH director Insel's views exactly, except this comes, not from an administrator in a policy paper, but from a team of working neuroscientists in a technical article.

And please — in case it crosses your mind — avoid trying to correct my conflation of psychiatry and psychology, as many others have done. It's disingenuous to say that psychology is a science, united by theory, while also saying that psychiatrists aren't real psychologists or the reverse. If psychology were a science, psychologists and psychiatrists would share the same theoretical core and would express mutual respect, such as exists between cosmologists and particle physicists, whose specialties have much less in common than psychiatry and psychology, but who productively attend each other's conferences and share technical data. As for encompassing principles on mental functioning, if that truly is a hallmark for science as you say it is (I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt on that), That is also not my opinion, it's in the nature of science and scientific fields. Each legitimate scientific field is defined by central theories that guide experimental work and unite the field. Try to imagine biology without the theories and principles of evolution, natural selection, cell biology and genetics — you would have something resembling psychology, people wandering in darkness, publishing their opinions and refusing to read the opinions of others.

I find it instructive that you don't even know that this theoretical requirement exists and is an easily established fact about every legitimate scientific field. then that will probably be a bit of a stumbling block for a while. Regardless of that, progress can be made until that framework is in place - using the scientific method. Use the scientific method to analyze a philosophical abstraction called the mind? Psychology's science issues are deeper than you're willing to acknowledge — the mind is not something open to empirical investigation, and science must be empirical. It's not an accident that psychology doesn't have defining, tested principles to unite the field — to do that, research would have to produce objective results that every psychologist would readily accept. But mind studies don't produce that kind of objective evidence, for the reason that all mind-derived results are open to interpretation and conjecture. People just have to watch their step and avoid the dog shit. Or abandon psychology and transition into neuroscience, which is what the field's opinion leaders, quoted above, are recommending (and doing). Again, I emphasize I'm not the source of this view — it's the view of those who are in a position to express themselves, be heard, and be influential enough to guide the transition.

To suggest, as you have above, that this is merely my idea, one would have to avoid reading his own field's literature over the past five years, which ironically makes the unscientific, unreflective reputation of psychology and psychologists a serious and self-referential obstacle.