Psychology is a science.

[talisman]

Rather than clutter up gerbi's thread, I'm making this one. There was some small debate where reach kept claiming it was only a "pseudoscience" and I want to clarify.

First, science must be defined.

--Science is a process. It is a method by which people can record observations about phenomena they observe in such a way that some other person can read that record and can test the validity of the original observations by repeating the conditions the original experimenter outlined.

I'm going to assume that everyone is familiar with the scientific method, which, to me, is essentially half of what science is. The other half is reporting everything about your experiment in such a way that the experiment is replicable by another experimented who might doubt your results or who might want to expand on them, but first wishes to confirm them.

--Now, psychology.

Experiments in psychology are the same as experiments in any field. There are control groups, experimental groups, factors, effects, measurements of statistical significance, reporting of materials, procedures, and results. This makes it a science. Period.

--A pseudoscience is any kind of study that fails in respect to one or any of the criteria for a science. In a pseudoscience, there may be no control group, there might not be any report of procedures, whatever. It seems weird for me to even try to describe a pseudoscience because I don't think there are any pseudosciences... just claims made that are pseudoscientific. Arguments are more likely to be pseudoscientific, not areas of research.

--The difference between psychology and biology, for example, is only between what is studied. The way in which they are both studied is identical (I mean overall, not procedurally).

--Science is not concerned with the results of experiments, nor how they are interpreted. Science is merely the process by which experiments are carried out and reported. A science's "validity" is measured not by how accurately the results are attributed to cause and effect relationships, or how well an experiment answers a question, but only by whether or not the process was adhered to.