Scott O. Lilienfeld: Criticisms Of The Scientific Basis Of Psychology

In this article, the author, Scott O. Lilienfeld, examines six commonly used criticisms that attempt to disprove the scientific basis of psychology. He then offers his rebuttals and attempts to explain eight possible reasons as to why the public feels this way. Scott believes that the reason many professionals often criticize psychology is to make their own professions inadequacies look better. In reality though, psychology may be one of the most important sciences there is. The main theoretical points in his paper are the six commonly used criticisms of the scientific basis of psychology and his rebuttals. The first one, “Psychology is Merely Common Sense” says just that. That everything in psychology is a commonly known fact amongst the
general population. Lilienfeld offers some examples of these ‘facts’ such as “Strange behaviors are especially likely during full moons” and then states that scientific findings should be considered first over common sense. Now that’s just common sense. The second misconception is “Psychology Does Not Use Scientific Methods”. For this one Lilenfeld explains the commonalities across all sciences in the way they approach questions and conduct experiments. The physicist uses a scientific method approach in conducting his experiment on gravity; as such a Psychologist uses a scientific method approach in his experiment of the behavior of rats.
The next one states “Psychology Cannot Yield Meaningful Generalizations Because Everyone is Unique.”. As his rebuttal, Lilienfeld argues that yes, of course everyone is unique, but the uniqueness may be entirely irrelevant to the way the treatment in question works. As an example, he offers this; “Although all individuals with melanoma are surely unique, 90% or more of cases of this form of skin cancer are largely curable with early surgery.”. With that he is saying that although everyone is unique, the disease that people may suffer from is all treated the same way. Therefore yes, psychology can yield meaningful generalizations. The fourth public misconception of psychology is that “Psychology Does Not Yield Repeatable Results”. To disprove this, Lilienfeld cites a study done by Larry Hedges in 1987. Hedges decided to test this theory and discovered that the consistency of physics attempting to estimate the mass or lifetime of stable subatomic particles were actually no more consistent than psychological experiments. The fifth statement against psychology is that “Psychology cannot Make Precise Predictions”. For this statement, Lilienfeld writes about a person who
left a review on Amazon.com on a book that he had co-authored.
The reader who wrote that implied that any science that yields a wide range of results is not competent. Lilienfeld rebutted this by saying that every experiment is dependent upon different variables, and if one group of professionals conducted the same experiment as another group and ended up with different results, they more than likely used different sources for their variables and should not be considered invalid. Now, last but not least, “Psychology is Not Useful to Society.” The APA’s Benchmark Study has revealed that many people do not see how psychology can apply to many other non-psychological fields such as crime prevention and psychical diseases. Lilienfeld does admit that “one could make a reasonable argument that these fields have made more significant and
enduring contributions to society than has psychology.”, but also believes that calling psychology completely useless is very wrong. He rebutted this last misconception by giving many examples of how psychology has helped other scientific fields advance and has proven itself very important for success in some cases. One example he gives is psychology has proven memory to be much more transformable then believed and has in turn had an impact on the verdicts of many legal cases. To me, Lilienfeld hits the nail on the head every time he rebutted one of the public misconceptions of psychology. The way he gave the examples of how psychology has been invaluable to society today was very good. He started off with the statements the public believes about psychology, then proceeds to disprove it in a kind manner. One or two of these misconceptions I personally agreed with until I read what Lilienfeld had to say about that. This article really did change the way I think about psychology. All in all it was an extremely well written and constructed article. I am glad that I read it