Posted on 03/08/2016 6:01:42 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
[SNIP]
The diminution of the Big Idea isn’t easy to accept,even for those willing to concede that there are major problems in their field.An ego depletion optimist might acknowledge that psychology studies tend to be too small to demonstrate a real effect,or that scientists like to futz around with their statistics until the answers come out right.(None of this implies deliberate fraud;just that sloppy standards prevail.)Still,the optimist would say,it seems unlikely that such mistakes would propagate so thoroughly throughout a single literature,and that so many noisy,spurious results could line up quite so perfectly.If all these successes came about by random chance,then it’s a miracle that they’re so consistent.
And here’s the pessimist’s counterargument:It’s easy to imagine how one bad result could lead directly to another.Ego depletion is such a bold,pervasive theory that you can test it in a thousand different ways...Different versions of the standard paradigm all produce the same effect—that’s the nature of the Big Idea.That means you can tweak the concept however you want,and however many times you need,until you’ve stumbled on a version that seems to give a positive result.But then your replication of the concept won’t always mean you have a real result.It will only show that you’ve tried a lot of different methods-that you had the willpower to stick with your hypothesis until you found an experiment that worked.
..the two-task method...invented 20 years ago now appears to be in doubt.As a result,an entire literature has been rendered suspect....
If it’s not much fun for the people whose life’s work has been called into question,neither does it hearten skeptics in the field.“I’m in a dark place,”[Michael] Inzlicht wrote on his blog earlier this week. “I feel like the ground is moving from underneath me and I no longer know what is real and what is not.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Social psychology "research" is publicly and privately funded to get published "scientific results" to motivate consumers toward a product or an idea, as well as studies ("research results") published, to influence political leanings and social activism (thought).
How many of you, or your kids or grand-kids, took (or will be taking) social science/psychology courses in high school and college - or have been influenced by a "new study?" This social/scientific "thought" has permeated all fields of study - it is the "Big Idea" that manufactures and drives social interaction (and nonsense like "safe places") - it underpins education, media, politics and pop culture.
Now the entire field of social psychology and the 20-year-old "Big Idea" theory, and the research tool of "ego depletion," is crumbling and with it "truth" in meta analysis.
[There are many interesting links in article.]
Add this to the pseudo science of "modeling" - the scientific wonder-child - the deep well of funding for environmental studies/theories, driven by emotion - the calculated, manufactured social-psychologcial fear of climate change by those working to increase their power and control over us through regulation and taxation, by their emotional calls to "mob up" and punish "deniers" - it is a conspiracy to gain power through deception, and they call it "science."
Always question the idea of a well informed public, while warily considering the idea of a manipulated public.
Bookmark for later. I was out of my Psych/Soc studies prior to this (92), interested in what this involves.
I once went to a psychologist, he made me lie on the couch face down! ~ Rodney Dangerfield ~
I’m being told I have to take this, even though it seems like there are other social sciences which might satisfy the major (and which I would prefer). I’m calling the school, thanks for the ammo :)
I remember from research classes that the more obscure is the item you are researching, the larger your study must be.
For example, a presidential race doesn’t have an obscured effect. People are being asked to choose between only 2 possibilities. Therefore, an entire nation’s choice can be roughly ascertained with a relatively small survey group, 400 to 500 randomly selected people.
When pontificating about obscure things, for example, marital satisfaction, researchers will often use extremely small groups of just 30 or 40 people and make broad generalizations about a nation from a totally unrepresentative sample. JMHO.
Probably the biggest problem in social scientific research is that it is nearly impossible to get a paper that disconfirmed some hypothesized effect published — no matter how well designed the study, no matter how careful the statistical analyses following the study, if the null-hypothesis is not rejected, the paper will be “for finding nothing”. Meta-analysis that only uses published papers simply amplify this effect by collecting all papers that “found something” and pretending that they represent all the findings.
Don’t you know gays are better parents than a mother and father? Marijuana is better than alcohol. A man who thinks they were “supposed” to be a woman really is a woman (even though they aren’t). Global warming only has bad effects. And on and on.
bwahaha. Thanks! Never heard that one before
I minored in psychology during my undergrad years. While there are meritorious branches of psychology, the field has become so biased and focused so much on social science vs. actual human behavior that it’s not recognizable from the early days.
I personally studied abnormal adolescent psychology, and even then it was always a discussion about psychosexual development and social stigma against homosexuality. In retrospect, I should’ve stuck with a minor in philosophy.
Please correct the title. The first word should be “The” not “A”.
The problem with the “Whole Field of Psychology” is that it is used as a tool to support social and political agendas, including the undermining of religion.
Except for the operant conditioning work by Skinner et al, I regard most psychological studies as hokum. This opinion is based on the few psychology courses I took in college (mostly to pad my GPA). What I found was poorly designed experiments, inadequate controls, poor data analysis and questionable conclusions. None of that has changed over the years except I find a lot of those same faults creeping into what are called the “harder sciences”.
I am not surprised at the finding that most of the studies on this topic were wrong. Others have published similar findings regarding other fields of science that show a large majority of peer reviewed scientific publications are wrong. I attribute that to many factors but perhaps the most important is lack of skepticism about their own work. People get the results they expect or hope for, and stop questioning their own data or conclusions. They fail to do the experiments that might disprove their own work. Its a recipe for self delusion.
Modern psychology is pretty much conceptual bunk, with very little experience to support it. Who ever heard of the entire human psyche being either anally or orally fixated. What about tactile or olfactory fixation? Its actually bunk.
Buddhist abhidharma had worked out how the human mind works over two thousand years ago. Genuine Buddhist lineages teach methods on how to rest the mind in peace and how to strengthen ones mind so it can become genuinely human.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhidharma
Quote: Some in the West have considered the Abhidhamma to be the core of what is referred to as “Buddhist Psychology”.[4] Other writers on the topic such as Nyanaponika Thera and Dan Lusthaus describe Abhidhamma as a Buddhist Phenomenology[5][6] while Noa Ronkin and Kenneth Inada equate it with Process philosophy.[7][8] Bhikkhu Bodhi writes that the system of the Abhidhamma Pitaka is “simultaneously a philosophy, a psychology and an ethics, all integrated into the framework of a program for liberation.”[9] Abhidharma analysis also extended into the fields of ontology, epistemology and metaphysics.
The prominent Western scholar of Abhidharma, Erich Frauwallner has said that these Buddhist systems are “among the major achievements of the classical period of Indian philosophy.”[10]
Unquote
And finally, one does not have to become “Buddhist” to earn the way to work directly with one’s own mind through meditation practice. Just find someone who is a lineage holder to teach you.
Then you can pretty much wave goodbye to Psychology.
We’ve idiotically placed the loons in charge of the loony bin. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that lunacy would result.
Psychology is far better suited to be a philosophy than a “science.” People aren’t lab rats and it insults their dignity to treat them like that.
Add to your list statistics and the bell curve.
All they do is say there MAY be a relationship. And HEAVY on the MAY. They prove nothing. They are a tool in the right hands but.......
Statistics are not for complex systems like people, health, climate, etc.
Regarding modeling. I built a lot of airplane models as a kid, NONE of the flew and I did test a few.
At best, statistics give you another question, never an answer. That used to be the philosophy of science.
Now we are gods and can control everything.
My dad was a clinical psychologist during the golden age post WWII. One thing he taught me was, do NOT go into the field of psychology to earn a living.
And if that isn’t your cup of tea there is the Bible. Of course then you have to deal with God and sin too, but nobody promised there were no hitches. Truth is like that.
Indeed. These precepts are so ingrained in our latest generation that they will never go away.
Just as the "eggs are bad for ya" garbage that is ingrained in most everyone's consciousness.
BTW...Has anyone noticed that FR seems to have fixed the "dodgey" quotes issue?
WHY ARE YOU CONSTANTLY POSTING ANTI-TRUMP ARTICLES????
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