You can objectively measure many behaviours, e.g. how many seconds it took someone to walk down a hallway after viewing images of younger versus older adults, how many times a person presses a lever to receive a reward and how behaviours change under different reinforcement of punishment schedules, whether an intervention reduces rates of suicide, whether behaviours associated with a depressive episode change in relation to an intervention. You can measure a whole bunch of physiological reactions also, like blood pressure, skin conductivity, eye blinks, sleep cycles - all which are used as dependent variables by psychologists. And medical researchers have a whole bunch of objective physiological measures also (accepting that all measures have a sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values that are not 100).
Don’t sell us short man, psychology or medicine. We’re studying the natural world and it’s fucking hard to do. Now in terms of this study, the dependent measure is self-report which is always a bullshit measure. But, I think it shows that theory about people being more positive about groups they identify with, and what scientist doesn’t want to be seen as rational and objective. There are plenty of shitty psychology studies around, which I believe comes down to poor education about statistics and experimental design.
For all the things you can objectively measure though, there are a whole host of things you forgot to measure, or didn’t even know you needed to measure. Which means you can’t control for them in your experiment, which means we can’t draw too many conclusions from the results of said experiment.
Sure, but that depends on the complexity of what you are trying to measure. Some things, like measuring habituation to a repeated loud noise or the effects of an intermittent reinforcement schedule on lever pressing aren’t hugely complex. We can do those studies on pigeons or even fish. Others, like my PhD research is ridiculously complex with no hope of finding anything convincing enough given the unmeasured error. So the results are not reliable like mixing chemicals in a test tube or finding the higgs boson to a probability of 5 sigma (something we will never get in psychology). But it’s still freaking hard work and done using the scientific method.
If other scientists don’t think psychologists are scientists too then I hope they enjoy being elitist a-holes.
I wouldn’t suggest psychologists aren’t scientists at all, that would be unfair. But you’re scientists only as far as us medical doctors are scientists when we’re doing clinical research. Where the natural ‘hard’ sciences really can get 5-sigma results, we have to make do with p=0.05 —and even that has to be taken with an exceedingly large pinch of salt because the stats might have been (probably were) done as part of a statistical significance fishing expedition …
So sorry, but despite believing
I reckon you need to come sit with us quacks in the soft science corner …
A good example of how easy it is to ‘prove’ anything in psychology, even if it looks like you’ve got a well designed study.
The headline on the article is BS of course, because of psychology’s tenuous link to the natural sciences; replace ‘Science’ with ‘Psychology’ and you’re closer to the truth.
I’m not saying psychology is a worthless discipline (and the same goes to similar fields, like economics, or sociology), it’s just that they’re not in the same category of epistemological tools as the natural sciences, and their results need to be evaluated with a lot more caution as a result.
Also, I don’t think the natural sciences are totally immune to some of the problems we’re talking about here, but they’re usually a lot easier to spot, and far less common. And there are other disciplines that are somewhere between the two, like medical science, or ecology, for example.
None of this should be at all surprising of course, as the complexity of the systems we’re attempting to model goes up, it gets harder and harder to produce good results (the same is true of course in physics as well, look at how hard it’s been to accomplish anything in theoretical physics in the last 50 years, but at least there nobody is fooling themselves).
I have noted, however, that scientists who appreciate it takes all sorts to make a world tend to be in positions where part of their job is public education.
So do I, but this whole topic is speaking in generalisations. It’s going to be difficult to discuss any professional group without making some generalisations.
Example from a different profession: medical doctors terms to get sucked into investment scams more than other professions, to the point that some schools offer courses in things like real estate investment. But I’m sure there are doctors who are also canny investors out there.
Well, this is really a problem with English and pronouns isn’t it?
The result of the study is that scientists guess that if we constructed a rationality-and-objectivity scale (RAO) then we’d find the average RAO among scientists is higher than the average RAO among non-scientists.
What we are inclined to read in the headline is that individual scientists tend to think of themselves as having higher RAO than non-scientists.
I think there are very good reasons to think the former is itself an objective assessment. I think there is little reason to think that the latter is even true (that is, that individual scientists, on average, have a higher opinion of their own RAO than individual non-scientists do).
But it does give you the training to defend your ideas…no matter how stupid they may be. Even if it is in a field one is completely unqualified to speak about. Michael Shermer’s book "Why People Believe Weird Things’ has an entire chapter to PhD’s who are completely batshit crazy.
Hence we have mathematicians and engineers touting Creationism, chemists engaging in Holocaust denial, sociologists whose works get used to justify attacks on civil liberties of a class of people, and Divinities Studies experts making claims about pharmacology.
I have found this to be true of nearly all “smart” career people. Engineers, Academics, Doctors, basically anything that requires intensive post-graduate study. (The only exception is lawyers, most lawyers I know actively discourage people from pursuing law, "OMG no, don’t, its terrible!)
I have had many go-rounds with PhD holding academics about my lack of credentials. “Where did you do your undergrad” “I didn’t.” “…oh, but you’re so smart.” “I know, thanks.” “I was going to recommend the PhD/MBA/Masters program…” “Thanks, I’m good.” - its hilarious to watch people short circuit.
I’m about to enter an architecture program, which as a field lies in the convergence of art and science. I certainly value rationality, and I definitely consider myself rational at least most of the time…
But on the other hand I think my life would be much more drab without impulsiveness and blatant irrationality. So maybe I’m making the right choice?
I do think there is value in subjectivity in applied science, particularly when it comes to ethics. Knowing about a thing and how that thing relates to our existence is not necessarily neutral. I’m also not fully sold on Feynman’s belief that nature is ‘unaware’ of our observations of it- I don’t mean that in some supernatural sense, more that the book on consciousness and the types of consciousness other things might possess is very much still out.
I’d also add that in the trades, practical rationality is extremely important and likely a determinant in whether you are successful and advance in the field or not. While still true in the new construction world, this is particularly relevant when dealing with the built world, working on remodeling/retrofitting etc. There are situations you run across that aren’t in the manual, so to speak. The ability to respond, learn from those events, and apply that knowledge down the line is a rational exercise nearly every trade worker makes on a regular basis.
With all that said…
::prepares to be shredded by actual scientists::
I find it boils down to their motivations. Career-oriented people are motivated by their career - money, power, prestige, etc. Many, many people are not. I’m motivated to make money so my family is very comfortable, but I’m not motivated by the job itself. I hate pretty much anyone I meet in the corporate arena, but having a house and the stuff we need and options to travel or cover emergencies are what I realize are most important to me. If I had to do it differently, I would have taken a lucrative position where I’m standing more often for my long-term health and that’s about it.
I’ve met many people like me in college, but I would say the majority are like what you describe where their worth is tied to what they do.
