This presentation aims to delineate the difference between science and pseudoscience and justifies psychology to be a valid science.

2. Objective of the Lecture
• To make you a more critical thinker than you already
are
• To make you question incoming information through
valid questions
• And of course, to make you aware about science and
pseudoscience
• Why is that important?
• So that not to be fooled and appear smart

3. Ways of Knowing

4. Authority
• judged to be expert or influential in some way
• children as parents
• students as teachers or textbooks
• patients as doctors
• they can be wrong as well

5. Use of reason
• We sometimes arrive at conclusions by using logic
and reason
• it can be used to reach opposing conclusions (e.g.
political, religious debates)
• the issue of dualism or monism can be argued for or
against
• no progress towards growth

6. Experience
• the process of learning things through direct observation or
experience, and reflection on those experiences
• experience is the best teacher
• but experience alone can be dangerous due to our biases and
limitations
• belief perseverance (holding onto the belief despite contradictory
evidence)
• confirmation bias (ignoring the contradictory evidence), (racism)
• availability heuristic (overestimation of unusual events, e.g. plane
crash vs car accidents)

7. Science as a Way of Knowing
• Determinism
• Psychological phenomena have causes
• Doesn’t mean predestined
• Discoverability
• by using agreed-upon scientific methods, these causes can be discovered, with
some degree of confidence
• if everything has a cause then what about free will?
• Child whose tantrum was reinforced can be predicted to show it again in similar
situations
• A student will good IQ and pre-entry test scores can be predicted to do well later
• The behavior follows certain patterns, it’s not random
• Carnap: free choice has no meaning unless determinism is true
• Whatever, it’s not the area of interest for psychologists
• Psychologists can study the influence of belief in free will on behavior
• Study which behaviors are “freer” than the others
• Limits on free choices?

8. Science Makes Systematic
Observations
• The scientist’s systematic observations include:
• precise definitions of the phenomena being measured
• reliable and valid measuring tools
• generally accepted research methodologies
• a system of logic for drawing conclusions

9. Science Produces Public
Knowledge
• most appealing about science—its objectivity
• elimination of the biases mentioned earlier
• can be verified by more than one observer
• defining the terms and specifying the procedures precisely
• “Replication” the process of repeating the study to look for the
similar results
• The failure to replicate can spot scientific fraud
• The rules for how to describe a study are there in Publication
Manual of the American Psychological Association
• The problems with introspect led to objective measurement of
behavior, J.B Watson

10. Science Produces Data-Based
Conclusions
• researchers are data-driven
• conclusions about behavior through objective information
• Extreme of this approach in Francis Galton i.e. “efficacy of
prayer”
• He hypothesized sick who pray to recover sooner than who do
not
• The people who pray or are prayed for, should live longer than
the general population
• None of these predictions turned out to be true
• clergy lived for an average of 66.42 years
• lawyers lived for an average of 66.51 years
• the study had many demerits and heavily criticized

11. Science Produces Tentative
Conclusions
• conclusions drawn from data are always tentative
• subject to future revision based on new research
• science is a self-correcting enterprise
• research is never absolute but one step closer to the
truth

12. Science Asks Answerable
Questions
• Empirical questions
• can be answered through scientific methodology
• are precise enough to allow specific predictions
• e.g. What are the effects of psychological stress (mind) on the
immune system (body).
• how physical fatigue affects problem-solving ability in some
task
• Not an empirical question:
• Whether mind and body are one or separate entities (monism
vs dualism)

13. Science Develops Theories That
Can Be Disproven
• a scientific theory is precise enough so that it can be disproven
• Asks empirical question and develop it into a hypothesis that
can be falsified
• e.g. Does a belief in God increase with age?
• Hypothesis:
• With increasing age, the strength of an average person’s belief in God
will increase systematically
• Theories that consistently find support tend to be abandoned
• Theories that do not make precise hypotheses or disproven e.g.
Freud’s are unscientific

14. Psychological Science and
Pseudoscience

15. Recognizing Pseudoscience
• Phrenology in the 1800s claimed to measure
personality scientifically through analysis of the skull
shape
• Astrology also claims to describe and predict
personality
• Subliminal messages i.e. below the sensory
threshold to change behavior e.g. obesity, stop
smoking, increase self-esteem

16. Associates with True Science
• Pseudosciences do everything they can to give the
appearance of being scientific
• Phrenologists made many complex calculations and
equipment for skull measurement
• Discredited by physiologist (Flourens)
• e.g. phrenologists believed cerebellum is related to
sex drive but pigeons, dogs lost balance
• but continued to gain popularity in the nonscientific
community

17. Relies on Anecdotal Evidence
• reliance on and uncritical acceptance of anecdotal evidence
• Phrenologists had catalogues of various skulls and alleged links
to their behavior
• a thief with a large area of greed
• a priest with an overdeveloped bump for worship
• a prostitute with excessive sex drive
• Subliminal messages also have many anecdotal evidences
• Confirmation bias: how many thieves who do not have a large
area for greed
• How many people who are not thieves have large area of greed
• Effort justification:
• After paying money people feel cognitive dissonance to admit that they
do not work or get more motivation to change

18. Sidesteps Disproof
• They cling on to the theory despite being proven wrong
• They rearrange the theory in a way to make it look good
• e.g. a person with the large area of greed does not become thief
because he had an even larger area of honesty
• An NLP practitioner would usually say that the person is not
suggestible
• Subliminal message supporter would say that CDs work on the
unconscious and science is still not advance enough to
measure them
• Or the fault lies in the person. He might be having a motivational
block
• Research reports in pseudoscience journals don’t pass through
peer reviews
• Don’t describe the procedures in enough details for the other to
replicate them

19. Reduces Complex Phenomena
to Overly Simplistic Concepts
• Pseudosciences do not explain behavior
• e.g. what mechanism precisely causes the person to
lose weight after listening to CD
• How do horoscope or handwriting influence behavior
and personality?
• If they do explain their explanations are too vague or
unnecessarily complex and irrational

20. To Sum Up
• pseudoscience is characterized by:
• a false association with true science
• a misuse of the rules of evidence by relying
excessively on anecdotal data
• a lack of specificity that avoids a true test of the
theory
• an oversimplification of complex processes
(Goodwin, 2010)

21. Reference
• Goodwin, C. J. (2010). Research in Psychology
Methods and Design (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley & Sons, Inc.