by Ariarule on 8/29/23, 10:59 PM with 94 comments
by NoZebra120vClip on 8/29/23, 11:49 PM
Speaking personally, the genesis of my mental issues is clearly not "chemical imbalance" but rather my relationship to the world. What I heard and saw on TV, my experiences with Mom, Dad, and Sister, my formative years in school and church--with, you guessed it, other people.
I see a lot of pop-psychology YouTube clickbait that goes "Heal your relationships! Here's how!" and I don't doubt that people can take certain action with willing parties and heal certain relationships, but geez, guys, it took me 50 years to get to this point of isolation and alienation, and I alone will never heal relationships that have taken such a beating. It would take collective, cooperative will and action to do so.
Treating one person at a time with these methods is like trying to catch the ocean and dye it green, one drop at a time. It just doesn't make sense. That's only one of many reasons why there are poor outcomes, especially for psychiatry, where they just toss you in a looney bin with lots of other messed-up people, and now that's your community and that's your reality, deal with it.
by mdorazio on 8/30/23, 12:35 AM
The author does a fantastic job of summing up the big issues facing psychology and a lot of my own thoughts regarding the academic side of the social sciences in general. So very few people in the field seem to care about the basics of the scientific method (reproducible experiments, hypotheses that can be falsified, etc.) or of producing research that can really be applied in useful ways. And unfortunately so much of it seems to bleed over into pop science and business "coaching" these days, too.
by huitzitziltzin on 8/30/23, 12:14 AM
When you’re a grad student you have to read a few methods and applications papers. When you’re a professor you have to stay on top of what matters in your field but you mostly attend conferences and seminars for that.
Other than that… we don’t read anyone’s work. Indeed nearly all research isn’t ever cited and the fraction of cited papers not in the “central methodology” category above which are actually carefully read is probably extremely low.
by ketzo on 8/29/23, 11:53 PM
Insightful, funny writer who takes a really pragmatic view of his own field in a time of great upheaval. Can't recommend him enough.
by davesque on 8/30/23, 12:03 AM
> Plenty of these findings are interesting and some are useful (especially if you are a rich, lonely monkey).
You'll have to read the article for the context.
by derbOac on 8/30/23, 5:52 AM
Modern meta-analysis has its roots in clinical and educational psychology, and now there's the lens focused on replicability and preregistration. If history is any guide, about 20 years from now the methods that come out of this will start to be applied widely and routinely in biomedical research and then elsewhere.
The useless fat in science isn't limited to psychology: there have been controversial articles all over the place about decreasing scientific returns for investments, and drowning out of innovation by incentivized noise. Sure, maybe there's less fat in some fields than others, but there's plenty of fat to go around.
What's maybe unique about psychology is how much outrage and exposure there is about it. Other fields might be in denial but the time will come.
Also, part of the reason we don't mourn the loss of fabricated or unreplicable studies is because the people who hung their hat on it continue to do so, burying their head in the sand. Everyone else probably was silently waiting for more evidence to come, and came it did, and then it was swept under the rug of self-correcting science.
Modern academics is sort of a marvel in how much bullshit it can absorb without consequence. It's like the The Blob of modern institutions.
by owenversteeg on 8/30/23, 5:25 AM
>The second formerly useful proto-paradigm is something like “situations matter.” This idea maintains that people's contexts have immense power over their behavior, and the strongest version maintains that the only difference between sinners and saints is their situations. The most famous psychology studies of all time are “situations matter” studies: the Milgram shock experiments, the Asch conformity studies, the bystander effect, the Stanford Prison Experiment (since revealed to be much more of a scripted play than a study). The now-much-ridiculed “social priming” studies, like the one where you unscramble words about being old and then walk more slowly, are also “situations matter” studies. So are “nudges,” where tiny changes in situations bring big changes in behavior, like redoing the layout of a cafeteria to encourage people to eat more veggies.
Does anyone know any good situationist studies aside from the big names?
by paulpauper on 8/30/23, 12:44 AM
by syndicatedjelly on 8/29/23, 11:56 PM
by ed-209 on 8/30/23, 12:28 AM
Two fakers collaborating might equally have conspired. Either way this is hilarious.
by gnramires on 8/30/23, 1:28 AM
I think studying well defined and important things is... extremely important :) I think for example it should be possible to measure remission from depression.
I also think though that psychology could 'make philosophy out of its physics' (in an analogy with an experimental field like chemistry or material science), and form theories about happiness, well being, etc.. that are grounded in insightful philosophies. And then try to measure or make some progress and recommendations to guide the field (like, how should we define well being, how should we measure it, and what kind of interventions help it).
by rPlayer6554 on 8/30/23, 3:57 AM
Who cares if monkeys are paying for sex if people are killing themselves from depression? Are there not tons of psychological illnesses where progress could be made in new techniques to help people live their lives well? Maybe reduce the need for drugs?
by javajosh on 8/30/23, 12:59 AM
by mensetmanusman on 8/30/23, 12:35 AM
Psychology might be too complex for the current scientific method. Millions of variables and not enough humans to control.
by raincole on 8/30/23, 1:35 AM
At one point the 10,000 hours rule was so popular that it almost became common sense. And it's bull. Ego depletion was so well known. And boom it's not replicable either. Is everything just food pyramid?
by bsmith89 on 8/30/23, 1:28 AM
> Good/useful/valuable/important/positive-ROI science doesn't necessarily require everyone to know what the major discoveries are nor even care when 60% of studies fail to replicate.
Handful of reasons I feel this way:
- If I care deeply about exactly 10 of the 100 publications in my sub-field, and you care about a different 10, it may not matter much to either of us when 60 of them are later refuted. I may have not cared about those specific conclusions, already been skeptical about them, or have several other studies and my own unpublished results to maintain my confidence in the broader idea.
- While we all have great examples of dramatic upheavals in _other_ people's fields — pick your favorite of cosmology, genetic engineering, mathematics, etc. — when you're immersed in it, science is much more incremental, subtle, and complex. Congratulations! You've ventured on beyond the Dunning-Kruger effect. Scientific progress is not a series of miracles.
- Relatedly, I'm guessing most scientists are much more aware of the shortcomings in their own and their peers' research. Do keep this in mind while reading the perspective of an insider. Be skeptical, by all means, but not only of psychology.
by momirlan on 8/30/23, 1:10 AM
by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on 8/30/23, 5:11 PM
by blastersyndrome on 8/30/23, 5:55 PM
An eye for an eye.
by LegitShady on 8/30/23, 3:55 AM
by esbeeb on 8/30/23, 7:57 AM
by esbeeb on 8/30/23, 1:07 AM
by dang on 8/30/23, 12:56 AM
I’m so sorry for psychology’s loss, whatever it is - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37315292 - Aug 2023 (94 comments)
Is it defamation to point out scientific research fraud? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37152030 - Aug 2023 (13 comments)
Harvard professor Francesca Gino was accused of faking data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36968670 - Aug 2023 (146 comments)
Fabricated data in research about honesty - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36907829 - July 2023 (46 comments)
Fraudulent data raise questions about superstar honesty researcher (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36726485 - July 2023 (33 comments)
UCLA professor refuses to cover for Dan Ariely in issue of data provenance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36684242 - July 2023 (131 comments)
Harvard ethics professor allegedly fabricated multiple studies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36665247 - July 2023 (215 comments)
Harvard dishonesty expert accused of dishonesty - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36424090 - June 2023 (201 comments)
Data Falsificada (Part 1): “Clusterfake” – Data Colada - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36374255 - June 2023 (7 comments)
Noted study in psychology fails to replicate, crumbles with evidence of fraud - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28264097 - Aug 2021 (102 comments)
A Big Study About Honesty Turns Out to Be Based on Fake Data - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28257860 - Aug 2021 (90 comments)
Evidence of fraud in an influential field experiment about dishonesty - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28210642 - Aug 2021 (51 comments)
by scrubs on 8/30/23, 2:25 AM
by zug_zug on 8/30/23, 2:18 AM
But if the author is trying to insinuate no meaningful progress in psychology was made in the last X years because of some twitter poll then that's doubtful -- scientists getting to the point they can scan neurons and reconstruct what you see through the activations.
I do agree that you could generate endless reams of pseudo-data about the human behavior by labeling and classifying tiny patterns, and that that's not very practical. But that doesn't invalidate the rest.
Perhaps one way to operationalize psychology would be to take a huge dataset, e.g. 1 million tinder profiles, and have a contest to identify the .1% that got married or something (and how long they stayed married for).