Pure psychology research definitely has its methodological and rigour issues that cast doubt on all its findings. However I think working psychologists in industry have validated psychological methods (A/B testing) and theories (dark patterns) for making profit at the expense of users’ privacy, mental health, time, and attention.
Comment on Psychology
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Psychology is in many ways built on top of problematic methodology which have led to conflicting findings and a broad replication crisis.
Not to mention nearly all psychological research is conducted on WEIRD individuals (western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic). Usually college students.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is pretty much the most empirically validated form of effective treatment for a wide variety of people, with a wide range of disorders / problems.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3584580/
It is also so straightforward that many people who are not in serious mental anguish / disordered thinking can just actually do it on their own after a few actual talk sessions, by following some steps and rules that can fit on a few pages of paper.
positivepsychology.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-t…
I am not disagreeing with you though.
Much of the history of psychology as a field is built on theories that are not testable, do not allow for a way to do a test that would affirm or negate the actual validity of theory.
To add more fun to this:
Turns out the fundamental theory behind why SSRIs… work… is basically bunk.
psychologytoday.com/…/we-still-dont-know-how-anti…
Almost every single study on the efficacy of SSRIs in treating what they are prescribed to treat is either funded or conducted… by the people selling them, the drug companies.
And they almost never do long term studies, and they almost always massively downplay the severity and prevalence of side effects.
Remeber when we had an opiod crisis because the Sackler family and other drug companies heavily pushed low quality research and recommendations onto doctors?
www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2021-067606
Studies similar to this one have become more and more common in the last few years, with it basicslly looking like SSRIs are either no more effective than placebo, or are nearly imperceptively better, just barely outside of statistically equivalent, or that they are better than placebo, but only for a completely unpredictable subset of people.
Psychiatrists have been very vehemently arguing about this in the last few years, usually not in public but uh, they don’t like to state it as bluntly as I just have, because if it turns out SSRIs and many other mind altering pharmacueticals… don’t actually treat what they are intended to, that they don’t actually work in the ways they tell their patients they do… but do very clearly cause negative side effects… well that’d mean they’ve basically been doing medical malpractice their whole careers.
Whoops!
andros_rex@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The issue with CBT is that there are populations that it is not effective for, but because it’s so easy to apply that’s what the majority of professionals are trained to (only) provide. It’s not trauma informed at all - there’s little understanding of how to treat trauma in general.
I have issues with rumination, and CBT makes it substantially worse. I have told every professional that I have worked with that I know it does not work for me, and instead of respecting that, I get stealth attempts at it or they do end up giving me the fucking worksheets.
CBT also can work like a kind of gaslighting - ie, right now I’m terrified of leaving the house because my drivers license is now invalid by state law and EO - my county’s jail has killed quite a few people and a little gay trans man like me is not going to do well. I can’t “replace” that thought with a better one. Ranking how I feel about that just makes me more freaked out.
sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
I have told every professional that I have worked with that I know it does not work for me, and instead of respecting that, I get stealth attempts at it or they do end up giving me the fucking worksheets.
That is some fucking horseshit right there, in a just world you’d be able to easily sue such clowns for malpractice or at least submit a complaint that would actually lead to re-training or re-certification or something for these assholes.
I’m not trying to say CBT is a perfect panacea of mental health, just that its … basically an example of the field of therapeutic psychology not even really having any real empirical validity until fairly recently.
The mental health care system is just as, if not more broken than the rest of our healthcare system.
Absolutely full of people faking or overstating their qualifications, just doing literal fraud, or what isn’t technically legal fraud, but should be considered as such.
Its a clusterfuck, designed primarily to extract money, wase time, deliver subpar treatment.
ie, right now I’m terrified of leaving the house because my drivers license is now invalid by state law and EO - my county’s jail has killed quite a few people and a little gay trans man like me is not going to do well. I can’t “replace” that thought with a better one. Ranking how I feel about that just makes me more freaked out.
I sympathize and empathize with that… I’m not gay or trans, but I’ve spent a year or so crippled and homeless, no id, no phone, all your shit stolen every month, getting assaulted every other week… I know what its like to live in constant fear.
… Your concerns are extremely real, and any decent doctor would look to identify and then alleviate the source, the cause of the problem.
I wish I had a solution for you.
… We’re gonna need to build an underground railroad to get people into at least bluer areas…
Had I the money, and properly functioning legs, I’d rent a car for a week and drive you myself.
Fuck, I dunno, you might be able to successfully apply for asylum in Canada… you might be able to make a decent case you’re a directly targeted minority by their asylum seeker guidelines.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m just scared all of the time. Any time I can get a leg up - I’m not protected. I can lose everything at any time.
If I end up homeless I’ll kill myself. I’ve been sexually assaulted too many times with a place to live. I can’t handle it anymore.
earphone843@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
The biggest issue is that every brain is different, and you can’t slap absolutes on that. One study may be completely accurate, but with their specific sample.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The standard p value in most psych research is 0.05, which means that you are willing to accept a 1/20 risk of a Type 1 error - that you are content with a 5% chance of a false positives, that your results were entirely due to random chance.
Keep in mind that you don’t publish research that do the give results most of the time. Keep in mind that you have to publish regularly to keep your job. (And that if your results make certain people happy, they’ll give you and your university more money). Keep in mind that it is super fucking easy to say “hey, optional extra credit - participate in my survey” to your 300 student Intro Psych class (usually you just have to provide an alternative assignment for ethical reasons).
Mrs_deWinter@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
That wouldn’t be a problem at all if we had better science journalism. Every psychologist knows that “a study showed” means nothing. Consensus over several repeated studies is how we approximate the truth.
The psychological methodology is absolutely fine as long as you know it’s limitations and how to correctly apply it. In my experience that’s not a problem within the field, but since a lot of people think psychology = common sense, and most people think they excel at that, a lot of laypeople overconfidently interpret scientific resultst which leads a ton of errors.
The replication crisis is mainly a problem of our publications (the papers, how impact factors are calculated, how peer review is done) and the economic reality of academia (namely how your livelihood depends on the publications!), not the methodology. The methods would be perfectly usable for valid replication studies - including falsification of bs results that are currently published en masse in pop science magazines.
br3d@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Psychology gets unfairly singled out wrt replication but the same issues are found in a lot of other disciplines, such as biomed.