Why is psychology considered a science?

Why is psychology considered a science?
Their studies often have no scientific basis and they have some of the largest bias, due to the research being done on humans. I'm not denying mental illness or anything dumb like that, but every psych paper I've read has been full of fudgery and shenanigans. It doesn't seem to be about exploration of the human mind, but an exercise in trying to prove some point.

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Because rejecting psychology as a science would invalidate the educated status of many women. In the feminist West such a move is not realistic. In normal countries you actually can discern that psychology has poor reputation. Japan for instance abolished social science departments.
timeshighereducation.com/news/social-sciences-and-humanities-faculties-close-japan-after-ministerial-intervention

I am just sad that something that's used to treat mental illness has been hijacked to validate political opinions.

It's a science the same way that early medicine was a science despite being hilariously shitty.

Blood letting was shit medical science but over time our understanding got much better. We're just much slower in the relatively new study of psychology.

I'm biased because I was diagnosed by a professional with some shit and it has an adequate explanation of what's going on in my life. Granted it's a basic understanding, but it's quite honestly saved my life.

I'd be more worried about the politicization of the APA and such because if things get out of hand we could see pol shitposting being a "disorder" the way that slaves who wanted to be free had a "disorder".

SJWs ruin everything.

Gotta separate the sub-fields of psychology to answer really. What you say is certainly true for social psychology. They claim to use scientific method, but the methodology used is often weak and far fetched inferences based on sketchy data are made. Having said that, biases or heuristics such as confirmation bias and belief perseverance have been discovered and verified in the field of Psychology. In the case of social psychology, it's been pretty much hijacked by leftist and feminist women, hence the field is producing so much shit.

In cognitive psychology and even more so neuropsychology, the scientific method seems to be taken more seriously. Using brain imaging and computational models, neuropsychology has provided lots of valuable information and theories about brain function and how it relates to certain cognitions and behaviours.

True my psych professor is a cognitive psychologist and he does some interesting work with swearing. He's actually cool, but whenever I see a social psych article my autism is triggered.

Sorry, was so poorly written I reposted
Unfortunately it's the social psych "discoveries" that tends to get covered in the media.

It probably has something to do with social psychology producing more "novel" discoveries. Little do people know about how p value fucking is not only happening, it's the rule. It's true though you can't use a fake brain image, but you can interpret your sketchily gained data any way you want.

Tell us about your relationship with your mother.

I made the mistake of reading the comments. Only took like 5 for the smug liberal to show up.

it honestly depends how the experiments were conducted. IF they follow the scientific method and are reproducible results, it can be called a social science. Same with economics, sociology. Unfortunately sometimes they don't, such as in behavioral psychology. But more biological based psychology is usually pretty legitimate

KEK. Also, Freud is still taught as more than a historical relic that started modern psychology. My textbook taught the id, ego, and super ego as if they were scientific concepts.

Same reason anthropology and sociology are sciences.

I thought Freud is having a come back right now tbqh

Are you serious? Functional brain imaging techniques are seriously lacking in their methodology. fMRI is so useless, it may as well be considered outright destruction of research funds. Computational models are usually designed by mathematicians, certainly not the typical woman psychologist that can barely test hypotheses by calculating p-values in SPSS. All respectable and valuable knowledge on the brain comes from the fields of medicine, neuroscience, and related disciplines. Psychologists are rarely useful here.

Of cognitive psychology there is still a serious replication problem. 50% of their studies are not replicated compared to the dramatically low 20% of social psychology, is indeed major improvement, but still only barely acceptable.

The way psychology always tests hypotheses, through testing statistics, is imo not really scientific. It just makes it way too difficult to unmask frauds, adultery, and fasle positives. When X has to appeal to Y, in order to acquire validity, we may as well discard X. That is basically what you can infer when you need to get in biology to salvage psychology.

you just said it, that "imo" it's not really scientific. but it can be, in economics too. You can propose a hypothesis, test it, change variables, ect, completely follow the scientific method and if it produces reproducible results, it's technically as valid as other scientific principles (until disproven, but the same is said about other, more concrete science).

You could indeed test it in theory. Psychology in the real world attempts to accomplish this through statistical testing. This fails to provide a clear answer, since a p-value is an approximation, an estimation, a guess. Moreover, multiple studies may yield different, conflicting findings, even if their design is identical. Again, we have no truthful way of determining which hypothesis is to be rejected and which can be retained. It will always be fuzzy where to go and ultiamtely, will come down to interpretation which differs from person to person and is liable to any sort of bias. Therefore, it is certainly not as valid as other scientific disciplines. As long as there is no rigorous approach for testing psychological theories, I see no reason to perceive it as a science.

So are you affirming psychology isn't a science, or are you joking?

I don't know, but it shouldn't be classified as such.

if it werent so consistent with what we do theorize about it, i would agree. but it is fairly consistent, even from culture to culture. the brain is just a machine, receiving an input and giving an output, and psychology strives to understand what changes that input to output. There arent nearly enough inconsistencies with what is tested and what is observed to throw out the whole subject. I do agree with you that you have to be careful when interpreting results to look for any bias. Tons of psychological studies have bias.

In case you have not heard, over half of the studies in psychology fail to be replicated:
nature.com/news/first-results-from-psychology-s-largest-reproducibility-test-1.17433

That hardly appears as being consistent, does it?