IMHO, while part of the reason psychology is less data driven than other fields is due to the dearth of hard data and difficulty in isolating factors etc., it’s also in no small part due the fact that people have their own opinions about and experiences with these matters, to a greater extent than other fields.
Most people don’t have much a personal bias in favor of thinking lymph nodes operate this way or that way, or personal non-laboratory experience that has a bearing on it, so it’s easier to just judge based on data. If you’re talking about human nature, or about things that have ramifications for political ideology, that’s a different story.
So it’s natural and inevitable that these opinions intrude into the scientific process to a greater extent than they would in another field.
[I noted earlier that a lay person has a stronger basis with which to judge a psychological theory than they do one about complex areas of physics. But for the same reason, it’s also likely that some of what is passed off as science in this area is just scientists doing what lay people are doing, but with letters after their names.]
One should be equally skeptical of attempts to malign scientific consensus due to a correlation that does not imply causation. Unless you can point to a specific example where you think the scientific consensus is wrong (and persuasively argue that it is both wrong and a result of bias), then the appeal to the authority of the scientific process is justified (in that it is the best known method for arbitrating such disagreements), and Occam’s razor suggests that unless specific evidence is put forward to the contrary, the most reasonable assumption is that causation runs opposite to your suggestion – that the scientific consensus is driven by fact-based scientific research, whose results play a part in the causation of the political viewpoints you witness.
IOW, you have presented no evidence whatsoever regarding the direction of causation here. You have presented correlation. There is a very good reason for the phrase “correlation does not imply causation.”
You are misusing - and possibly misunderstanding - the term (& concept) “correlation does not imply causation”. It has absolutely no connection to what’s being discussed.
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that this has significant relevance when discussing the mainsteam position or consensus of professionals in the field of psychology, when the issue touches on political or PC issues. Essentially, any time the mainstream view is aligned with a left-wing viewpoint, there is room to question whether this is the result of unbiased scientific study or simply a reflection of the fact that people tend to find support for things they already believe (or prefer to)."
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There’s always room to question the conclusion of any supposed scientific study. That’s what science means, for goodness sakes… it has to be falsifiable and repeatable. There’s nothing controversial about that. If you want to use the appearance of political bias as your red flag to challenge results, that’s your call. But you’re going to look silly if you attack well-founded results in proportion to their supposed left-wingedness, without offering any sensible alternate explanations. See the entry on “Creationism” for more detail on how that works.
I agree with you here. But to what extent? It’s one thing to say there is some effect of bias (as there is in any field, including particle physics); it’s another to suggest that said bias should make one skeptical of a scientific consensus. Are you saying you think 1% of consensus in psychology is tainted? 10%? 100%? What are you saying? How skeptical should the layman be? If the field is tainted to the 1% degree, does that mean that the layman rejects all of the consensus even though the consensus would be correct 99% of the time? Does the layman really have any reason to think he knows better without having done any research? Every field’s consensus is wrong some percent of the time, but so what? Do you have an idea to improve things? How? Does it involve a subjective perception of bias, which may itself be biased?
You know I glossed over the fact that he was discussing a consensus, not just individual studies. Not that there is any formal process for establishing consensus in any branch of psychology, but to doubt a collection of studies simply because the hypothesis can be politicized seems like a really terrible way to go about doing science.
Also I don’t know why he can’t perceive that he is discussing a correlation between the political views of researchers and their results.
Let’s discuss one with an eye on how it was resolved. It seems relevant because once we establish that psychology is biased more than any other field of science, we should find out how to fix it. Maybe history can help since “just doubting it because its left-wing” isn’t gaining traction.
These are all good points. There’s no one answer. If it was me - and in fact it frequently is - I would assess in any individual case to what extent the consensus view in this case appears to be fact/evidence based, whether there appear to be any flaws in the derivation logic, to what extent the issue is impacted by bias, to what extent the scientists appear to be focusing on the bias-related angle, and how strong I personally feel the evidence is for my own position. It will vary a lot.
The correlation causation line is relevant when you have two things that you know are correlated and the question is whether one causes the other. It is not relevant when you have two things that you know are correlated and the question is whether there will be some practical ramification or result arising from this correlation. You’re confusing “causation” in the sense of the two things being correlated due to some “cause”, and “causation” in terms of whether the correlation will “cause” something else to happen.
Being male is correlated with being a violent criminal. “Correlation does not imply causation” is relevant to a discussion of whether being male is a cause of someone being a violent criminal. “Correlation does not imply causation” is not relevant to a discussion of whether a predominantly male population is likely to commit more violent crime than a predominantly female one.
In this case, the correlation is between being a psychologist and being a liberal. But we are - or at least I am - not discussing whether being a psychologist causes being a liberal (or vice versa). We are discussing what the practical results are from having a predominantly liberal group assess ideas that have a bearing on liberal sensibilities.
You know what? I think conservatives at least are willing to discuss claim 1 (albeit with brass knuckles and shanks at the ready). They - at least those posting to this thread - don’t seem to want to get anywhere near claim 3.
Why do I think this? Because it’s the 3rd time someone’s proposed a conservative resistance to psychology as a discipline - and the 3rd time no one’s cared to engage, refine, or refute it.
This claim relates to why psychologists are mostly liberals, which is not something I’ve been discussing in this thread. I have a hard enough time as it is conversing with people who can’t keep the various aspects of the issue separate, and wouldn’t want to confuse things even more.
Well IMO, it’d make for a much more relevant and worthwhile thread if someone cared about why.
I’ll hazard a guess that you’re enough of a positivist that you only give a shit about any issue where you’re satisfied hard evidence obtains. People like that wear me out sometimes (not an ad hom and not intended as such).
Psychological research is based on a lot more than just anecdotes. I like hiring Psych undergrads because they have had to do so much statistical math work, but they don’t come in thinking they know business thanks to an undergraduate degree.
My b-school profs took advanced statistical classes taught by a professor in psychology.
If you go to Psychological Bulletin, you can see the level of data analysis going on in modern psych research:
A weasel word at best. You made that claim, along with your statement of “There has recently been a move within the field to rely more on evidence, but even this has been met with resistance from those who don’t believe the field lends itself to data-based conclusions” to try to imply that the field is not data intensive.
You are wrong.
We can get into FMRI studies, cortisol level studies, other brain imaging, and finally behavioral genetics research going on in University psych departments to find that there is NOTHING that is not backed up by data sets.
No, I used that word because my point was about the historical background of this field, which - as is so frequently the case - helps to shed some light and understanding of where it is today.
If you would have read the articles I linked earlier, you would see that there is in fact a lot of resistance in this field to only assuming things based on data, even today.
One doesn’t follow from the other.
Yes, there’s a lot of data work going on. But that doesn’t imply that the theories commonly held by experts in the field are exclusively those which are backed by data. To the contrary.
- I would assess in any individual case to what extent the consensus view in this case appears to be fact/evidence based, whether there appear to be any flaws in the derivation logic, to what extent the issue is impacted by bias, to what extent the scientists appear to be focusing on the bias-related angle, and how strong I personally feel the evidence is for my own position. It will vary a lot.