guy sajer wrote:I disagree, psychology IS science. But it is a social science and anyone with experience in social science research will (or should--not all social scientists are reflective) that social science research is almost always tentative. No study or small collection of studies is sufficient to decide an issue, given, among other reasons, the inability of social science to create laboratory conditions that control for the myriad of factors that influence outcomes (and hence the inevitably large error term representing random noise unaccounted for by the model). It is only AFTER a large enough number of credible studies have been done that one can get a sense of where the preponderance of evidence is pointing.
The assertion that social scientists can adequately and accurately explain complex systems and phenomena is largely hubris.
I agree that psychology is science. Psychologists will do double-blind experiments from time to time to test a hypothesis. However, it is not always possible to set up controlled experiments for psychology. Even with double-blind experiments, it is not alwyas possible to control things. The drug industry is running into problems with human guinea pigs who are doing multiple trial drugs at once.
Anyhow, as far as complexity goes, I don't think psychology is inherently more complex than biology.