It seems to me that the chemistry professor at Annette's school is
aware, at least, of much of the highly questionable "science" that
has come out of certain areas of psychology and psychiatry for
about 100 years now. In fact, as many of us have noted, we often
must disabuse intro-psych students of the popular notions of psycho-
logy before we can begin a discussion of its scientific aspects.
I would like to believe that Jim Clark is correct--that there is a
motivational bias among certain groups of natural scientists: we are
questioning some of their more deeply held irrational beliefs. But I
think that this is simply a conceit. I think there is more of an
availability bias working here: when nonpsychologists think of the
word "psychology," the first things that pop into their heads are
examples from the nonscientific areas of psychology. That is why, as I
explained in a recent post, I like to describe to my intro students the
characteristics of the two "knowledge" traditions in psychology that
often enter into conflict with each other (also see Kimble's 1984
article in the _American Psychologist_, "Psychology's two cultures,"
Vol. 39, pp. 833-839, for another example of this idea).
Until psychologists from all areas adopt the tenets of science in
everything they do--and admit when their ideas do not have scienti-
fic justification--we will continue to have anecdotes such as Annette's.
Jeff Ricker
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale AZ
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
