Just a follow-up and thanks to all the replies and advice!
OK--after I calmed down I asked myself, what should I reasonably
do? Well, I decided education was a must, so I pulled a badly
dog eared and annotated copy of Stanovich's How to Think Straight
about Psychology from my shelf and wrote a nice dedication to the
person in question--emphasizing the value of this book to me with
all its notes and creases and stains--that this is a prized possession
that I offered to make peace.
I then sat and talked with her for a while. Apparently she took 4
psych classes as an undergrad at Cal Poly and claims that in all 4
classes (abnormal, intro, effects of drugs on behavior, and personality)
she never saw a bit of empirical evidence presented or anything that
even approached a scientific method mentioned in her classes. Well,
I didn't want to argue the point since I have no information on whom
she took her classes from, etc. etc and we all know that it is possible
to have classes in psychology taught from a nonscientific perspective--
so I let it slide. I simply emphasized that as an academic psychologist
(heaven forbid I violate some legal statute in calling myself simply
a psychologist) my definition of psychology included a scientific
investigation, using standard scientific methods of inquiry to draw
conclusions, this being a more quanitative approach--although there
was much to say for qualitative research in psychology as well.
I emphasized that human behavior is a challenging field to study and
that unfortunately, what makes "psychology" such a difficult construct
is that there are many people who consider anything and everything
having to do with human behavior, as psychology, but that that is a
misaplication of the term. In addition I pointed out the dangers of
not thinking scientifically about psychology because that is the source
of much junk science within our field, a problem far more pervasive for
educating our students than hers--to which she heartily agreed.
Anyway, she agreed to read the book over summer vacation :-)
and we left on amiable terms--in fact, during the awards ceremony she
shifted her language from science versus nonscience to natural sciences
versus non-natural sciences--a nice compromise and one which probably
also sat better with the other "nonsciences".
annette
Annette Taylor, Ph. D.
Department of Psychology E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
University of San Diego Voice: (619) 260-4006
5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, CA 92110
"Education is one of the few things a person
is willing to pay for and not get."
-- W. L. Bryan
