fostel@ncsu.UUCP (11/17/83)
First, lets not revive the Rational Psychology debate. It died of natural
causes, and we should not disturb its immortal soul. However, F Montalvo
has said something very unpleasant about me, and I'm not quite mature
enough to ignore it.
I was not making an idle attack, nor do I do so with superficial knowledge.
Further, I have made quite similar statements in the presence of the
enemy -- card carrying psychologists. Those psychologists whose egos are
secure often agree with the assesment. Proper scientific method is very
hard to apply in the face of stuuning lack of understanding or hard,
testable theories. Most proper experiments are morally unacceptable in
the pschological arena. As it is, there are so many controls not done,
so many sources of artifact, so much use of statistics to try to ferret
out hoped for correlations, so much unavoidable anthropomorhism. As with
scholars such as H. Dumpty, you can define "science" to mean what you like,
but I think most psychological work fails the test.
One more thing, Its pretty immature to assume that someone who disagrees
with you has only superficial knowledge of the subject. (See, I told you
I was not very mature ....)
----GaryFostel----