This is Phil Runkel replying to Marken's post of 21 August.
I agree that the lack of scientific attitude is the most frequent
barrier. If the feeling of the necessity for testing a claim empirically
could be increased, much of the difficulty would fall away. But how to
increase respect for the wscientific attitude? I found during my teaching
days that apmost nobody at any university was actively, consciously, or
even any way at all putting their students' noses against the scientific
attitude. The was always preaching about it in the first chapter of the
text, some of the preaching pretty misleading, but after that chapter, the
cponstant message wa simply, "Here is what you should believe." No rubber
bands required.
In a large class in social psychology, I divided the students into
many small groups and asked each group to choose a topic to do some
empirical research with. I made constant rounds of the groups to help
them along. One group wanted to investigate whether belonging to a
fraternity or sorority interfered with studying. OK, and how do you
propose to get an answer to that question? Well, they thought a good way
to do it would be to ask, "Does belonging to a fraternity or sorority
interfere with studying?" That is, most or all of the people in that
group seemed to believe that all you had to do to settle that question was
to put that question to some members of fraternities or sororities.
I came upon another group talking about what size sample to take
of their population. They had come to an agreement that one-third would
be about right. How did you reach that figure? Well, we talked about it,
and that seemed about right. So I referred them to a chapter in a book
that told how to calculate a sample size in a finite population. We met
again, and I asked them what sample size they were going to take.
"One-third." How did you come to that figure? Well, they assigned one
of their members to read the chapter, and then they talked about it, and
one-third seemed about right. The person who read the chapter did not
think the mathematics in it was anything worth paying attention to, and no
other member thought of asking whether there was any mathematics in the
chapter.
And so on. I think most people believe truth to be a state in
which one feels convinced. You hear people shouting, "And I really
believe this!" as if you should believe it, too, because it is loud.
Often, when I have asked people how do you know that, I have got the
reply, "I just know, that's all!" in an angry tone.
But what about people trained in the social sciences, you will
ask. Or maybe you won't. I once went to considerable trouble to think of
all the assumptions that underlay collecting data -- just the phase of
collecting the kind of data one collects in research on human behavior. I
think the assumptions came to 15. One of the themes of the book I wrote
with Joe McGrath was that you can't learn anything without assuming that
you already know something. So I wanted to show the kind of thing people
assumed they already knew when they collected data by various methods. I
put those 15 assumtptions in an appendix to the book. As far as I know,
there has been one person in the world who read those assumptions. I
think to most social scientists, arguments about the nature of causation
in living creatures are to be relegated to the methodologists, if anyone.
Well, excuse me for running on and on with my cry of pain. It's
nice to know that a few will say, yes, that's what it feels like, all
right.
All I know is that we have to keep at it.