I'm not saying the studies aren't interesting. I find them fascinating but I take them with a grain of salt. Studies about how people act within certain situations or prediction human behavior can not be duplicated or replicated again. They are a ONE time snapshot of the flowing river.
I've not said that psychology does not use the scientific method. I said that it gives allowance for deviance from the beginning, which other sciences do not.
Everyone here has said "there's lots of variables..." part of the scientifc method is to ISOLATE those variables to help determine cause and effect.
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the results are different, the *mechanisms* aren't
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Again, following the scientific method mixing two chemicals, elements, molecules, etc, observing the results and comparing against a control group. No matter where the test is done, in the US, Japan, Antartica, Saudi Arabia, if the scientists follow the same methodologies, they will have the same results. The mechanisms will be the same and the results will be the same. That's the way that it is for ALL hard sciences.
Is Psychology A Science?
One of the parts that I agree with whole heartedly in that article is
"The truth is that psychological statements which describe human behavior or which report results from tested research can be scientific. However, when there is a move from describing human behavior to explaining it there is also a move from science to opinion."
I'll agree that once you use the scientific method you have been scientific in the study, that it becomes an opinion of the person conducting the study based on their personal experience.