zfleebin

Munchen: I have to disagree with what you are saying about the statistical analysis of psychological studies, or any scientific studies for that matter. The first thing I disagree with is your "cutoff." Can you point me to a scientist that will be quoted as saying that "things can be explained 100% or that they need to be explained to this degree to be "sound enough to be applied in the real world." I can honestly say that I have never seen an experiment that used an alpha of .0000000000.......
I guess my second disagreement is similar to the first one in that I do not believe that the ultimate goal of science is to understand 100% of the world completely because the basis of science is that we will forever be asking questions. It appears to me that your argument is based on your idea that science needs 100% reliability and validity to be of any use and I would like to see you support that hypothesis by giving us some examples of research that was held to those standards.

RoboBlaster

Psychology has had countless contributions in the real world, munchen. Corporations, for one, use psychological measures to hire employees as well as organize internal programs based upon psychological research. IQ tests are used in the diagnosis of mental retardation and learning disabilities in schools. Psychological research is used all the time for the treatment of mental disorders. Of course psychology doesn't work all the time, but neither does medicine.

This brings me to a point you made, shakran. Psychiatrists do focus on medicine and biological causes of mental illness. This would indeed be a "weakness" of the profession if taken in an isolationist context. By the same token, psychology could be seen to have a weakness by not addressing the biological or medical side of things enough. However, in today's mental health treatment, psychiatrists and psychologists work together to attack mental illness from both viewpoints as they are needed. Well, this is the ideal situation, anyway. Insurance companies intrude here but we won't get to that here.

A quick clarification here - you are right in that you don't need a license to be a "therapist." However if you want to be a therapist and advertise psychological services, you must have a license and a Ph.D (a master's in some states). So, if you want the real goods, make sure the therapist talks about offering psychological services, as only licensed psychologists can legally offer these services.

Oh, and zfleebin, will you marry me? Unless you are a dude, that would be illegal in most places. And I am not gay anyway, unfortunately.

Slavakion

As an interesting note, my teacher gave us some quick tests. While they're certainly not much more valid than "Hey, look at that", they were fun. I'm normal as far as OCD tendencies, exhibit 90% of the characteristics of an only child (which I am) and am reasonably well self-actualized (average again).

shakran

Exactly. Insurance companies are a problem, but so too are psychiatrists who see patients first. Lot of people think psychiatrists are like some form of Super Psychologist, and go there first. And oftentimes the psychiatrist is more than happy to throw drugs at the poor guy and schedule 8 million rounds of "therapy" at a squillion dollars an hour. Sure, these aren't exactly the most ethical guys out there, but with a public that knows nearly nothing about psychology, the unethical guys can be very dangerous.

munchen

i wasn't to argue that it is has to be 100% i was going for that it has to try to be. but i think you're right anyway. I think i just assumed that was the goal. i was going to try to support this by finding proper defintions and quotes then i relized that there are about 30 million diferent defintions and opinions on what science is. So i'll withdrawl.

I never meant to imply that phsycology wasn't useful or neccessary. I beleive the opposite to be true and have seen it work first hand. I think since i've only takin begginer courses i was fed mostly early stuff that wasnt as refined and was more questionable than modern psychology.


I don't agree with this. Neuroscience is a newer feild and it has a very good track record. i think it might be that psychology has evolved alot since the begining, but i dont have alot of knowlege in this area so i'll leave this to the experts to explain.

Note: I'm still trying to master this tone of voiceless, expresionless, body language free style of communication and im not a great writin' man to begin with. So if im coming off negativly im sorry

__________________
"Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun" -Matt Groening

roderickpsu

Much of biology and biochemistry can be applied to psychology studies. In fact, Penn State has a degree in biobehavioral health which begins to combine all of these.

sapiens

A bit off topic, but I had to comment...

This is patently false. There are many cross-cultural studies in psychology. Many effects have been replicated across cultures.

The mind is formed through cultural internalization combined with a very small amount of biology? Define cultural internalization. How does it happen? How do you quantify "a small amount of biology"? The mind would not exist without its biological instantiation. Sounds a bit like Cartesian dualism.

How could a focus on neuroscience possibly be a weakness?