Lecture 11: Psychological science into the 21st century: The standard paradigm, the replication crisis, and Open Science Flashcards
Isn’t it remarkable that you come across a chapter in a psychology textbook entitled
“Is psychology a science?”
Points to…
- insecurity of psychologists with regard to their own scientific field
- healthy self-critical attitute (typical property of psychology, seen less in other areas)
the image of the psychologist is determined by the media
there, psychologists rarely act in a scientific role. much more often you see psychologists that have never done research
verschil tussen hoe kinderen scientists en psychologen zien, en een groot verschil tussen “perceived difference in knowledge between different kinds of scientists and the average person”
oke
what also plays a role
criticism from within
criticism from within =
- Psychoanalysis: Psychology is superficial
- Critical psychology: psychology wrongly treats man as a physical object
- Humanistic psychology: scientific psychology is cool and distant, when it should be concerned with people
- Feminist and postcolonial psychology: scientific psychology is a matter for Western white men
so psychology has a hard time with itself and with the outside world… voorbeelden
- Psychologists regularly have to defend themselves
- Partly against stereotypes, partly against justified objections
- Bad experiences with Popper and Freud
- So for psychology, the demarcation problem is very acute…
- Maybe methodology can come to the rescue?
methodolatry=
Worship of a method that employs it uncritically regardless of ever- changing particulars and steadfastly ignoring past negative results.
wat is er met methodology en methodolatry
- Methodology plays an important role in psychology
- General principles like striving for clarity, focus on testing, the provisional nature of science
- Plus specific attention to issues such as uncertainty (statistics), induction, confounds
- Strong orientation towards empirical data + statistical analysis
- This is all good. But…
- A prevailing viewpoint in psychology is that science if characterizes solely by method
- “Whoever follows the scientific method is
scientific” - But make no mistake! You can also follow the scientific method very superficially…
- Are you scientific just because you follow the
precepts?
methodology kan daardoor dus ook …. worden
methodolatry
wat is de analogie van Feynman
Cargo cult science, in WOII the Americans build bases on the Pacific islands, and a cariety of religious practices spontaneously arose from that (planes, chocolate etc)
-> he suggested that science can work the same way, it looks like science but it isnt.
wat was feynman zijn boodschap
science is not just doing experiments and statistical analyses, it is an attitude
quote van Feynman
[T]here is one feature I notice that is generally
missing in Cargo Cult Science. That is the idea
that we all hope you have learned in studying
science in school—we never explicitly say what
this is, but just hope that you catch on by all
the examples of scientific investigation. It is
interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and
speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific
integrity, a principle of scientific thought that
corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind
of leaning over backwards.
The first principle is that you must not fool
yourself—and you are the easiest person to
fool.
mertons core values
- communalism
- universalism
- disinterestedness
- organized skepticism
communalism =
scientific products belong to no one
universalism =
truth claims are judged the same, no matter who makes them (je hoeft niet perse een phd te hebben etc)
disinterestedness=
scientists are not interested in the outcome of research
organized skepticism=
ideas are cracked down on and rigorously tested, regardless of who proposes them
hoe was de communalism tijdens 20th century
- articles were published behind a publisher paywall
- psychologists often regarded their data as property, did not share data or materials etc