Jim et al.: I basically agree. Actually, I think that most advocates of
empirically validated treatments (now called empirically supported treatments,
or ESTs; the now discarded term "validated" implied a finality that is
unwarranted and inconsistent with the notion of science as inherently
provisional and self-correcting; see Cronbach & Meehl, 1955, Psychological
Bulletin, on construct validation), myself included, would agree. Most
proponents of ESTs see them as an initial but quite crude step toward reducing
(slightly) uncertainty in clinical decisions and in constraining clinical
inferences, and toward nudging the field ever so gradually in the direction of
treatments that are grounded in at least a decent evidence-base. To me, I also
see ESTs as a partial, albeit imperfect, step toward sorting wheat from chaff,
and discouraging clinicians from using unsubstantiated and wacky treatments.
But I don't know many (any?) thoughtful people in the field who see the
EST criteria and lists as much more than a provisional and interim step toward
a more scientifically grounded clinical science.
Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology, Room 473
Emory University
36 Eagle Row,
Atlanta, Georgia 30322
[email protected]; 404-727-1125
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Clark [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2011 12:23 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Paul Lutus - Psychology is not a science
Hi
Mostly a bunch of naive nonsense, but I would like to expand on one point Lutus
made in passing. He noted that engineers, for example, base their practices on
well-founded scientific principles. I wonder to what extent psychological
practice, even that based on empirically validated treatments, is so completely
divorced from any such state of affairs. Engineers do not, I suspect, decide
about the required mass of a beam by looking at empirical data on beam
thickness and load bearing capacity. Rather (again I suspect) they have
formula that they use to derive the required structure from well-founded
scientific principles (which might have at one time been based on empirical
observations like those mentioned in the preceding sentence, but now probably
take into consideration the underlying science at a more molecular level).
For me, the requirement of empirically validated treatments is somewhere
between nonscientific and scientific, perhaps something we could call
pre-scientific. Psychological practice will become fully scientific when its
activities derive from well founded psychological theories, which of course
should produce empirically validated treatments as one consequence. I believe
that we are still a very long way from that point, both in practice and in the
education of clinical psychologists.
Take care
Jim
James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
[email protected]
>>> <[email protected]> 07-Sep-11 2:35 PM >>>
Today a student brought the following webpage to my attention,
http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/index.html . Is anyone familiar with
whatever story is behind his putting together this page? H ere is a brief bio
of the man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lutus .
Miguel
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