Scientists think they are more rational and objective than others think they are

Along those lines: people who blindly trust what journalists write about things that scientists say.

How many studies have been badly misrepresented in the news? All of them?

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As a (former) scientist, I find the breadth of this generalization absurd.

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As a psychologist who considers myself a scientist (I have a PhD in a science subject - yes that subject is psychology), I definitely would count myself as a scientist. I’m definitely more of a scientist that the medical doctors I work with (I don’t know if they consider themselves scientists).

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I agree. It shows you have a ridiculous amount of perseverence and ability to delay gratification at the expense of the rest of your life. But I suspect that group would have higher average IQs than the general population. Maybe not if you compare them to other post-grad groups. People with masters degrees are probably smarter (they knew when to stop).

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Unfortunately, the pudding was found inadmissible in court.

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How can you have any pudding if you don’t prove your theory?

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The take-home message is that doctors are god-like.

Unless you are a surgeon, in which case god is surgeon-like.

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I suspect impostor syndrome is universal among all scientists, but some manage to conceal it better than others.

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Why stop?

I’m going to out on a ledge here and guess that there may be a lot of other “non-science” professions concerned with rational objectivity like many of the skilled trades or crafts where precision is absolutely essential. I’ve known machinists who were far more rational and meticulous than a lot of the scientists that I was surrounded by in school (and since then). Not knowing any personally, this is a complete guess, but I’m betting any of the really dangerous trades (demolition etc…) is filled with people obsessed with rational objectivity (and the corpses of the ones who weren’t).

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Depends on whether they are conducting experiments on people or not.

As the child of two hard science PHDs, color me not shocked at all by this finding.

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It depends on whether we’re doing research or not. Medical practice is usually more about evaluating which research is applicable to our particular problem, so I don’t think we suffer the delusion that Medicine is a natural science. Which rather a lot of psychologists appear to fall prey to

As an anaesthesiologist, most of my practice is art; developed from others’ science. I’ve practised until I’m good at what I do and if I get out of practise then quality suffers.

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I think this may be applicable to a higher proportion of experimental methods than the layman might ever suspect - while results are (mostly) highly repeatable, getting the method to actually work requires a fair amount of training. It may, in fact, be a bit of an art form.

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Psychiatry can seem like a series of experiments at times.

To be honest, trying to understand how the human brain works in interaction with the environment is probably among the most difficult things that researchers can hope to do. The amount of error in all our measures ensures that we are only ever sniffing at the truth. It makes psychology a pretty difficult science to do and defend especially when you are trying to find a reliable and valid way to measure subjective experience. I see no problem with psychology being described as a natural science.

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Get a job, start a family, earn some money to buy a house, you know, have a life.

Aw, come on … :stuck_out_tongue: :laughing:

Natural Science: any of the sciences (such as physics, chemistry, or biology) that deal with matter, energy, and their interrelations and transformations or with objectively measurable phenomena. (Mirriam Webster, my bold)

You can’t objectively measure anything in psychology. Psychologists and medical researchers alike merely apply the scientific method to phenomena too complex to measure objectively and without bias. As you say:

I’m happy to accept that Medicine can’t be a natural science for the very same reason. Perish the thought, but could it be that psychologists fall into the very trap outlined in the article?

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So scientists, who understand the scientific method, consider their methods more rational than lay-people, who do not (necessarily) understand the scientific method. Explain to me again how you would draw the conclusion that scientists’ view of themselves is less realistic than expected, for these inputs?

This experiment sounds like it may have been done by sociologists.

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Definitely observed this tendency (anecdotally, of course) amongst mathematicians and engineers. Some subjects seem to attract a kind of chauvanism/philistinism.

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