Answering the Critics:

IV. On the Charge of [Lack of Evidence]

Here Wyatt's argument is criticized for not being based on, or backed up by, empirical research. Take this question as an example.

"You claim to have vast stores of evidence, ammunition galore in your War Against Psychology. But you do not provide a single case in point. Everything is generalised, anonymised and/or fictionalised, so there is no actual fact."

or this one, "It's easy to make claims and come up with some theory about the way things are, as you have done, but you have provided little to no evidence for what you say. Which seems a bit hypocritical to me considering your claim that psychology 'conflicts with...genuine scientific progress'."

I may not have performed a formal research project, but my observations are empirical in nature. The curmudgeons above, who treat all science as synonymous with end-stage confirmatory research, rigorously clad in numbers and APA style and packaged under the glossy cover of a peer reviewed trade journal, tend to be the same people whose research is unfaithful to the trans-disciplinary fundamentals of science: lacking the scope and depth with respect to observation, conceptualization, and fact collection. The scientific value of any piece of research actually rests in these aspects of the research you DON'T see in print (i.e., the many decisions and thought opportunities that make up the "space between the lines" in the final research report). So while there is a lot of research out there that has 'face validity,' which is to say, appears scientific by imitating the cosmetic features of end-stage science or hard sciences, much of this research actually fails crucial tests of science.

Over the course of my life in Psychology, over which time I enjoyed affiliations with over 9 colleges or universities in one or more capacity (i.e., adjunct faculty, graduate student, teaching/research assistant, faculty search coordinator, undergraduate), I took advantage of a unique opportunity to make some observations. But even more important the reliability of these observations across schools is the fact that, in each of these programs, I was trained by faculty to accept as universal certain policies and procedures governing various aspects of our day-to-day operations, including teaching, knowledge production (research), professional training and development, curriculum design, faculty search/selection, clinical assessment & diagnosis, professional ethics, and mental health delivery.

It is these policies and procedures that I offer as evidence of themselves, and as a social psychologist who has been through the system, I am qualified to opine on their effects, which requires so little speculation because most of the effects are intended by those who celebrate and enforce these standard operating procedures. So, in this case, education, observation, and logic suffice to present compelling questions. If you seek 100 percent certainty about the answers, well, this is not the field for you, because most of what is discussed or even published does not meet this standard.

I could conduct a formal study (though it would be an inefficient use of my resources), but I am addressing a lot of issues psych profs do not want publicized. When Jeffrey Weygandt formerly of the Brown & Williamson Corporation blew the whistle on Big Tobacco by claiming on the basis of personal communication and corporate policy that cigarettes were being engineered to serve as nictone delivery devices through a procedure known as impact boosting, not even the tobacco company insiders demanded empirical evidence, because they knew that the truth would be forthcoming. Psych profs have never demanded evidence for my observation- or communication-based views for similar reasons.

But lest you still think a formal study is necessary, I have received a handful of offers to co-author research in the area of Critical Psychology. But I always thought it would be difficult to find a representative sample of psych profs willing to assist or participate in research that portrays the field in such a negative light. Knowing my research would depend on their charity and honesty, I knew such research was systemically impossible.

Psych profs are very protective of their professional persona, and this alone is a social reality that prevents me from using formal research to establish the truth in their own arena. This is why Psychology does not have the critical tradition most academic disciplines have. And naturally, psych profs would be unlikely as members of a peer review committee that reviews 500 submissions for 5 slots in a trade journal to favor my research for publication (and researchers in this field need to pander to the lowest common denominator of peer review committees to compete for publication space in journals, which is partly why our organized body of knowledge is mired in mediocrity). They don't even have to lie about my research being flawed or substandard in one aspect. All they have to do is say that the research doesn't fit the theme of the journal or the interests of its members as well as the 5 submissions that ultimately won space in the journal.

But I went to a number of schools in various capacities, where I bent over backward -- and forward -- for policies and procedures I was taught in classrooms, textbooks, and national conventions are 'universal.' I do not need statistical induction to confirm the representativeness of a universal norm. I need only to point at the conduct and consequences of psych profs acting in compliance with these SOPs and demanding similar compliance from their peers. If you have a knowledge of these norms and the capacity to engage in or understand logical deduction, then you have all the ingredients with which to accept and understand what happens when someone does not comply fully with the policy.

fireflySun.com is the address for many facts, many deductions, and yes, even educated opinions. Even if my web site consisted of nothing but educated opinions, it has a right to exist. Let the critics dispute the educated opinions on logical grounds or offer opinions of their own. But the claim that the only viable opinions are those educated by 'data' is short-sighted if not unctious (i.e. pure theatre).

If psychology professors were asked to restrict their presentation to include only material verified through psychological research, there would be little if anything to discuss. Even psychology textbooks comprise a great deal of material not verified by data, including (1) findings with mixed support, (2) principles composed of two related facts connected by logic, and (3) theories. The validity of the psychological paradigm is itself untested, and for arguing against the worth of this paradigm, I have been put on the short end of a double standard. Critics prepared to accept the status quo have attempted to place the burden of evidence squarely and entirely on my shoulders, seeking to discourage credence for my position until I pony up the numbers. To these requests, I offer the following response:

"I have been asking this field for years to provide me with evidence of research WORTH reading and instruction WORTH attention. The failure of the field to provide these materials is the poster child of statistical reliability. Now that I have the kind of certainty that I enjoy, and now that I organized a critical mass of observations in ways that create a clear, coherent, compelling, and comprehensive statement, my first responsibility is to get that statement out there so others can verify it with their own eyes and test it through their own experiences."

In addition to the all the arguments against the demand for data, I offer the following reasons that humoring the critics is not one of my priorities:

1. It would be purely for the benefit of critics inside the field. These are the only people clamoring for data and these are the only people who would find some way to cling to their views despite the evidence. Any piece of research, including peer reviewed research published in prestigious journals, can be (and has been) criticized on many grounds, because there are always alternatives to the design choices, quibbles over what constitutes a suitable definition of evidence or standard for acceptance, and because there are always more cases that could be collected or verified as truthful.

2. The organized research provides nothing exotic. It does not represent a significant leap in the production of knowledge on this issue. Again, this is a theoretical and logical argument based on policy-related facts and deductions.

3. The type of research project suggested to me by an adversary is purely demographic. I can envision much more sophisticated research worth conducting on this issue but...beyond working without an affiliation and resources associated with a university professorship, I would need the cooperation of my adversaries. I cannot count on them to respond, let alone to provide honest feedback. Doctors make the worst patients and, similarly, researchers make the worst participants. By demanding this research, my critics hope to divert me on a course that could only lead to failure.

4. The argument is massive. I would have to break it down into a million micro-studies to publish the works in a form that can be digested by the trade journals and that meet the discourse requirements of the null hypothesis testing system.

5. I am most effective assuming a role for which the field makes no allocation: originator. At this stage, my argument should incite others to design research. This would be an efficient management and distribution of resources. Otherwise as an originator I am just wasting my talents on a lifetime of stovepipe research. I could also envision my role as one of coordinating or administrating the program of research.

6. The research suggested to me for this project, which is demographic or actuarial in nature, is far more simplistic than that actually required to evaluate my claims. And what is this demographic data compared to a narrative account of years of experience? I can accomplish far more as an author telling my story than a hundred demographic surveys.

Moreover, the demographic surveys suggested minimize a role for the best element of any empirical methodology: conceptualization. In a field in which empiricism is equated with numbers and statistical machinations, we have millions of highly circumscribed mini-studies which appear rigorous and which deploy design principles according to specs, but which fail to ask questions worth asking or which degrade the questions as the methodology unfolds to the point where we are left with 'so what?'-caliber conclusions (or left with questionable conclusions based on shoddy thinking at the stage at which inferences are drawn from the test statistics). The contemporary researcher is also prone to restrict the scope and depth of the raw observations so that the collection of data amounts to a pale representation of the factual landscape. The participant virulently opposed to my web site has demonstrated a tendency to confound facts with data and yet also demonstrates a tendency to deprive the 'observation' of a status equal to that of 'data.' A 'datum' is simply an observation quantified or coded so that it could manipulated or organized by statistics in ways that relate it to the hypothesis. I do not see much of a point to assigning numbers to my own experiences. As for whether these experiences are representative, one need only to know that norms to know that others who similarly violate the norms will incur similar consequences. It's just policy. I have access to more observations than those provided by own experiences (which span 9 different colleges and universities), but again, I do not see any benefit to cannibalizing and quantifying these case studies for mere justification purposes.

And what if I had on file the kind of data my critics require? Would they sing a different tune? The file cabinets of academics are littered with findings no one would publish (or if published, no one would read or proliferate) because they do not conform with the most popular or the most pleasant theories. Wyatt's thesis is that the current scientific paradigm precludes an adequate exploration of the issues. Why would he sell himself out to perform research according to someone else's superfluous and stifling rules? Not that at some point he hasn't relished the thought of proving them wrong in their own arena. But let me tell you about the nature of this arena. Nothing is ever proven with certainty and just about all research is infused by values and judgments that come not from the tool or from the soil but from the individual psychology of the scientist. There are a lot of constants but also a lot of variables in the process of designing psychological research. How do you define your control group? Do you use a structured or semi-structured interview? How do you code the results and what statistical tool do you use to analyze the data? Any research product is vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that there were alternatives. And I did not even mention that the alternative explanations for a significant finding is often a competing theory. Additional research is often required to provide evidence that not only is the researcher's theory the correct one, but that some other theory is not as adept at explaining this outcome. All these theories and all these methodological decision points indicate that the individual psychology or personality of the researcher plays a major role in the research. So it is not surprising that in the wake of some research there is some bickering. The business of theory testing and knowledge production is adversarial. There is a benign type of bickering in which one researcher would tell another, 'you haven't established anything yet, not until you replicate this experiment with this other population and under this other set of circumstances. A population and set of circumstances under which your theory may not hold.' But occasionally, the scientific process is politicized when the findings of one researcher are not friendly to another. 'Yes, but at best this supports only this little fragment of your theory. You still have to test the rest of it, and then it has to stand the test of time. And you're hypothesis is not correct. I would have thought given your theory that you would have predicted z, not x versus non-x. If you tested your hypothesis competitively, by pitting your x against my theory's y, then there would have been an entirely different outcome. And sometimes the arguments are about technical issues. 'You included far too any subjects. Your sample size was so high that just about any difference between the means would have been observed less than five times out of every 100 repetitions of this experiment. And you ran too many tests of this hypothesis. By chance alone, so many are bound to be significant."

Wyatt knows that responses to his unpopular research would be quite rancorous and political. With the status quo of psychological science itself at stake, his adversaries would dispute every one of his choices. When forced to defend the public image of their field, they would suddenly become cognizant of all those choice points they have denied. And although all the critics would offer different opinions on what choice Wyatt could have made here and there, they would never turn on one another to address the obvious differences in opinions among themselves. They would attempt to smother Wyatt in a smog of illegitimacy and attempt to disqualify him. In the process they would be interjecting their own set of biases to counter those of Ehrenfels, but they would attempt to appear like they have staked out higher scientific ground. The outcome of such a debate is akin to an argument in which those who shout louder and in great numbers appear to win.

Therefore Wyatt has opted to pursue research he always wanted to pursue, rather than that made necessary to make his case that a pattern of discrimination would never allow him to perform his research as an employee of a university. And what if he did the research? What if it provided support for his claim of discrimination? Would it be direct enough and clear enough to win publication? Would it win recognition for his cause? Would this one publication make him competitive for a university position? Assuming in some fantasy world, one publication were enough, would a university hire Wyatt knowing his research cast doubt on their science and their profession? What possible motivation could exist for Ehrenfels to conduct this empirical research? None. He knows the discrimination to be real. Why? Because he has suffered enough to predict successfully under what conditions and in what form it would occur again. And Wyatt, being intrigued by all the mysteries of the human psyche, not likely to devote his time and resources to a question to which he knows the answer. This is the difference between him and "too many" psychology professors, who formulate null hypotheses they are likely to reject so that they could publish on a career timetable.

fireflySun.com Report List

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Brad Jesness Target of Malicious Psychologists on Usenet: Brad Jesness

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Wyatt Ehrenfels Offers Links to Education and Appropriations Subcommittees: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Wyatt Ehrenfels Counsels High School Students on Choice of College Major: Wyatt Ehrenfels

APPIC Match Service Helps Veterans Hospital Psychologists Discriminate against Applicants w/ Disabilities: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Wyatt Ehrenfels Republishes Work of College Curriculum Critic and FOX News Writer Wendy McElroy: Wendy McElroy

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Wyatt Ehrenfels Dismantles Psychology's Standard Defenses against Criticism: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Points to Hypocrisy in Terror Management Research: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Releases Revitalized Pocket Memo: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun Press Release: Katheryn Moyer

Brad Jesness Exposes Malicious Stalking by Psychologists on Usenet: Brad Jesness

Psychology Majors Respond to Wyatt Ehrenfels fireflySun.com: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Wyatt Ehrenfels Offers Personality Taxonomy: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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From Position of Ignorance, APA Official Diverts Attention from/Urges Skepticism for, Wyatt Ehrenfels APPIC Discrimination Report: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Responses to Wyatt Ehrenfels Campaign to Reform Psychology: Wyatt Ehrenfels

Independent Publisher Offers Glowing Review of Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Wyatt Ehrenfels Teams with Physicist Jeff Schmidt: Wyatt Ehrenfels

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Benjamin Willard Elected President of Wyatt Ehrenfels Fan Club: Benjamin Willard

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