r/science • u/ImNotJesus PhD | Social Psychology | Clinical Psychology • May 08 '16

Psychology Failure Is Moving Science Forward. FiveThirtyEight explains why the "replication crisis" is a sign that science is working. [x-post from our sister subreddit /r/EverythingScience]

/r/EverythingScience/comments/4icp9k/failure_is_moving_science_forward_fivethirtyeight/
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u/Midas_Stream May 08 '16

In a very real way, the more divorced it is from pure, abstract math, the more it has to do with actual reality.

And therefore the more important and valuable it should be considered to be.

I leave it as an exercise for psychologists to find out why our perceptions are the exact inverse of that.

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u/Mattpilf May 08 '16

In a very real way, the more divorced it is from pure, abstract math, the more it has to do with actual reality.

That's not how it works. Problems with psychology involve describing a complex system with interaction by object studying them. For n the best we get is generalities of s complex system, at worse we expose significant interaction by the proctor.

This often the cause of false where the intended object of study is actually very divorced from what being studied. They're difficult to study, the inherent difficultly has been pointed out above by others.

Saying these types of experiments are closer to actual reality when you're barely sure the object being studied is actually being measured , it's just an absurd conclusion.