Before i start, i assume that you consider no other aspect of applied or experimental psychology pseudoscientific. Don't assume anything. Read. Instead of providing yourself with readily available facts, you have just constructed a straw man. Just thought i'd commet on some of your articles on the scientific status of Psychology. While your articles may appeal to the layman, the problems with Psychology (clinical)as a science you describe, demonstrate a clear misunderatnding of clinical science as a whole. Where is your evidence, sir? The President of the APA (the American Psychological Association) has recently adopted my position on this issue, and has exhorted psychologists to accept evidence-based methods — to the extreme annoyance of clinical psychologists, I might add. I would take this opportunity to reflect on what it is you ask of psychology, ... I don't ask anything of psychology except to represent itself accurately to the public. you say in one of your artciles that psychologists (clinical) kill people as a result of their failure to adhere to the scientific method, I have never said this, anywhere. You've built another straw man. again this statment demonstrates a ignorance of clincal science Since I never made the statement you falsely attribute to me, I don't have to defend it — you do. and the evidence base for supported psychotherapies There is no "evidence base" for "supported psychotherapies." Present practice is based on anecdotes, appeals to authority, and simple belief. This is common knowledge among practicing psychologists. (please reference such statements properly if you wish to be take seriously). I have, with full references. You didn't bother to read them. There has been no rigorous science conducted to support the present practice of psychotherapy. This is a fact freely acknowledged by professionals in the field, and reform strategies are being considered to address this problem. It is my understanding that your background is not in psychology, What you clearly do not understand is that a scientist examines only evidence, not its source. To question the source of evidence is identical to judging a person based on the color of his skin. nor a clinical or social science, Science cannot be broken up into pieces as you are trying to do. Rigorous science has the same properties everywhere it is practiced. Bogus science also looks the same. as a result i imagine that your knowledge of the methods of these disciplines is limited. You are free to imagine anything you like. You have just exhibited a blunt unwillingness to evaluate the evidence that describes the present state of clinical psychology, preferring instead to launch an ad hominem attack. Moreover, i would ask you to consider the fact that the consensus in the academic community is that clinical psychology is a scientific discipline First, that is utterly false. Second, this is an example of argumentum ad verecundiam (argument from authority), something scientists learn to avoid early in their training. You need the most basic kind of training in science and principles of logical argument. and the fact that there has neve been any serious threat to it's status as such is testament to this. Say again? The fact is that psychologists and psychiatrists have had to abandon one practice after another over the decades, and this history contradicts your position. Freudian psychotherapy is now known to be ineffective. Pre-frontal lobotomy is now regarded as a terrible mistake. Facilitated Communication and Recovered Memory Therapy are two more recent examples of practices that have been shown to be based on nonsense. The list is rather long, this is just a small sample.

U.S. courts of law have recently, and reluctantly, ruled that they will no longer hear cases in which "Recovered Memories" are the primary evidence. The reason? Recovered Memory Therapy has been demonstrated to be bunk. Perhaps you might take time to reflect on these and other points, if you require further specifics or further education, feel free to contact me. Why in the world would I do that? You haven't bothered to inform yourself about the present state of the field. You have exhibited a deplorable level of ignorance and hubris.

Your problem is that you need to believe in psychology. This means you cannot evaluate any evidence that contradicts your emotional investment. You appear to be suffering from Confirmation Bias Syndrome, a malady that hasn't yet appeared in the DSM for a reason that should be obvious (too many psychologists suffer from it).

Here's some of my thoughts n your last e-mail. I hope that we can exchange ideas without anyone offending the other too much. An interesting position, considering that my reply was intentionally couched in the tone you set in your original post. Don't assume anything. Read. Instead of providing yourself with readily available facts, you have just constructed a straw man.

This sets the tone of the following quite well. Do you mean what followed in my post, or what is to follow in yours? This is an example of the kind of vague thinking I object to in those who champion psychology as a science (even though their numbers are rapidly declining). I make some assumptions There is no need to make any assumptions, either in this exchange or in the general question we're discussing. The evidence is copious for the present sad state of psychology, both in courts of law and in the professional literature. because I do not have the time nor the will to discuss the empirical status of Psychology as a whole, Then you shouldn't have taken the position you did in your first post, which was in point of fact an empirical defense, with no supporting evidence. what I said was a simply to se the scene for further discussion. Too bad, because your way of setting the scene was to, in essence, wave your hands in the air, quote not one whit of evidence from any source, and commit several logical errors with which I am becoming very familiar. I hope that further discussion between ourselves can be a little less obnoxious, The discussion's style results from my right to reply using the same tone taken by my correspondents. I do not know you as a person therefore I would prefer to keep this exchange as pleasant as possible. I invite you to prove this. Avoid the sorts of non-arguments that peppered your first post. Where is your evidence, sir? The President of the APA (the American Psychological Association) has recently adopted my position on this issue, and has exhorted psychologists to accept evidence-based methods — to the extreme annoyance of clinical psychologists, I might add.

I would hope that you can take your own advice on the issue of evidence, since I do not reside in the US nor keep up-to-date with the on goings of the APA can you reference this statement? In each of the articles you claim to have read, the reference is given. I give it again in the correspondence board, several times. Here it is again:

Evidence-based practice in psychology However, this is not surprising to me, and in the UK, clinical psychology as a profession has been dedicated to evidence-based practice for some time This is an unsupported claim. If the practice of psychology were evidence-based, that evidence would have reformed the practice of psychology worldwide, because that is how science, and scientific evidence, works.

Example. In the UK, psychologists counsel teenagers to try to keep them from committing suicide, which for some reason is a particularly severe problem there. But none of them have evaluated this therapy in a scientific way.

What do I mean? I mean the only way to know whether the therapy is correlated with the outcomes is to have a control group. The control group would get a sham therapy, and neither the clients nor the therapists would know which group they belonged to.

At the end of the study, the rates of suicide for the experimental and control groups would be compared.

Such a study has never been conducted, and for obvious ethical reasons can never be conducted. Therefore with regard to psychological treatments, no one knows in any scientific sense which of them is effective, and which results from fad and belief.

And if you had read the articles you claim to have read, you would have already seen this thought experiment put forth. (you can find the BPS clinical and ethical guidelines on their homepage here: The British Psychological Society). Hand-waving guidelines don't define science. Rigorous experiment defines science. Moreover, the suggestions that all clinical disciplines should adhere to evidence-based practice is a movement common to ALL healthcare fields and a similar movement exists in medicine (Evidence-based Medicine). All except the sad fact that, with respect to psychology, this is a wish, not a reality. The problem with evidence-based practice (which is a concept that MUST be adhered to by psychologists in the UK) It is a concept being regularly ignored, which I just demonstrated in the above thought experiment. is that there is also practice-based evidence. This wordplay is as slick as it is lacking in content. Without control groups, without strict experimental protocols, there is no useful "practice-based evidence" worthy of publication in a refereed scientific journal, and the absence of those articles makes the point. Practice-based evidence might inform us that a client who does not respond to a structured approach like CBT, but who benefits from a less evidence-based approach (e.g. psychodynamic psychotherapy) has improved despite our treatment guidelines. If I know that this treatment approach might work for someone again in the future, do I simply deny them the option? This is a classic of its kind. If I discover that a green room produced a more calming effect than a pink one, do I have the right to call it science? Only if I include the possibility of no room at all, unfortunately that is not typically part of psychological research. People are just that, people, not symptoms or criteria defined by the DSM. We agree that the DSM is a playground for the whims of its authors, not a professional guidebook based in rigorous research. Clinical Psychology is not medicine, there will never be one treatment for one disorder, a diagnosis does not give a Psychologist a treatment plan. As usual in exchanges of this kind, you are now making my arguments for me. Because what you say is true, because there are no criteria to lead to a particular diagnosis or to a particular therapy, we must wait for scientific standards to take hold in the field. If there were to be a particular diagnosis and a particular therapy available for clinical presentations, scientific standards would have to be in place, and no amount of debate can change this. Psychologists use something called formulation, a way to contextualise and understand a person's difficulties to plan treatment. As such, 2 people with depression might both receive CBT for depression, but receive 2 very different treatments, and herein, the problem. The problem is that the clinician has vast latitude in deciding on a diagnosis (and there is substantial published evidence that he chooses based on personal taste, not symptoms matched to diagnostic criteria) and therapy, largely based on the inner world of the clinician, not the patient.

Tom Widiger, who served as head of research for DSM-IV, says "There are lots of studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one particular disorder and really don't systematically assess for other disorders. They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in treating and believe that most of their patients have."

If practice in the UK were substantially different, the American practitioners could easily be shamed into adopting those standards. Except that this is not true, as you have just acknowledged. Q.1 If you would like to discuss in more detail the evidence-base for psychology, but i'll refrain from launching into it if it's not necessary. This is simple sleight of hand. There is no there there. It might be more effective to ask you where you see the problems with the evidence base? This is not a problem I am having, this is a problem with psychology, and it is candidly acknowledged to exist by practitioners at all levels within the field. I don't ask anything of psychology except to represent itself accurately to the public.

Can you give an example to me of how Psychology has misrepresented itself to the public? Certainly. In the just-concluded "Recovered Memory" fiasco, psychologists presented themselves as scientific experts in courts of law, and people went to jail based on their testimony. If nearly all such cases, the original claimants later realized they were being talked into their "memories," recanted, and the vile criminals were released. In consequence, U.S. courts have decided to reject all future cases in which "recovered memories" are the primary evidence. In essence, based on direct experience the legal system no longer regards psychologists as scientists (as that term is defined in the criminal justice system).

This is just one of dozens of examples. I have never said this, anywhere. You've built another straw man.

I apologise, I must have read this on another site that linked to yours. That's fine, as long as you aren't posturing as a scientist. Scientists collect evidence is a more rigorous way. Since I never made the statement you falsely attribute to me, I don't have to defend it — you do.

I apologise if you never made this assertion I withdraw this question. Umm, this isn't law, where one can launch trial balloons to see which way the wind is blowing. Science and law operate on different principles. There is no 'evidence base' for 'supported psychotherapies.' Present practice is based on anecdotes, appeals to authority, and simple belief. This is common knowledge among practicing psychologists.

I'm rather puzzled by this statement? A review of the literature fully supports the statement. There is no corpus of scientific evidence to place any particular treatment over another. These choices are made based on fashion and argument, not evidence. I myself am not a fully qualified clinical psychologist I am an [ ... ] who will work only in one speciality only. While admittedly, there have been controversies surrounding the mechanism of action or the active ingredients in treatment psychotherapy research has never attempted to hide any of this evidence? That is an inversion of logic that would not escape the attention of a trained scientist. You are in essence saying there is no evidence to disprove the validity of present practice, but that is a nonsense criterion. The burden of evidence belongs to the advocates to support a practice, not to its critics to disparage it. And the latter would require proof of a negative, yet another logical error. I'll give reference to research I am familiar with:

I'm currently researching [ ... ]. The conclusions of the authors was that at 2 year follow-up [ ... ] and CBT were more effective in treatment and relapse prevention than ADM or pill placebo. Pill placebo, BTW was the least effective treatment. Of course, and no one tried to control for the knowledge of the practitioners or the clients. In other words, it wasn't a "double-blind" study. This lack of experimental rigor is the norm in psychological studies. This study is an example of good psychotherapy research and there's plenty more out there. As psychological research goes, your statement can scarcely be challenged, because the quality level is so low that it would be hard to dispute your remark. "Good psychotherapy research" is necessarily measured in relative terms, like "good astrology." You may say that a pill placebo does not adequately control for therapist contact, well, you're in luck a number of studies do, by having ongoing assessment sessions with clients which use no specific therapeutic techniques, where client are able to use the time simply as a vehicle for discussion of their current difficulties, there are more elaborate controls than this even, if you'd like further details (Shaw, 1977; McNamara, 1986) I realise these references are a little outdated, but I'm only giving reference to the research I'm familiar with in my current project, as i'm sure you will appreciate I don't have a huge amount of time to spend collating data for you. I must tell you that the picture you are drawing is one of practitioners trying to validate existing practices by comparing them, rather than trying to answer genuinely scientific questions like what is going on in the clients' brains and what real therapies might be applied to a known condition that can be diagnosed unambiguously (a possibility you have already dismissed).

I am sure that comparing orange juice to red wine would produce a statistically marginal distinction when applied to people dying of cancer, but this avoids the problem that the experimenters haven't tried to understand what it is they're treating. The point is that psychologists have no idea in general what they're treating, and a few rare exceptions have been summarily moved out of psychology into medicine where they belong (e.g. the administration of lithium instead of talk therapy for bipolar and depressive disorders).

You can always create the illusion of science by collecting data and showing a statistical correlation, but unless you craft a testable theory and then test it, you are engaged in bogus science. What you clearly do not understand is that a scientist examines only evidence, not its source. To question the source of evidence is identical to judging a person based on the color of his skin.

I would argue that I consider theory as well as evidence; evidence is meaningless without a theory. And the reverse. There is no theory about Asperger's or Autism, two conditions getting a lot of attention in the professional literature. There was a debate (now resolved) about whether Autism might be triggered by mercury in vaccines, but there is no meaningful debate about what Autism is. Until there is, there is no theory, therefore no science.

No one actually knows why teenagers commit suicide (in greater numbers than others), consequently what we end up doing is the modern equivalent of shaking differently colored dried gourds over their heads and trying to make sense out of the results. This is not remotely science. Questioning the source of evidence is very important, This is absolutely false. One can legitimately question the evidence itself — how it was collected, whether it really means what is says, whether the statistical weight is adequate to draw a conclusion from it, whether the methods did or did not overlook factors that yield a different explanation for the correlation. But discussing the source of the evidence is an obvious logical error. for example if all of the psychotherapy evidence that existed came only from Aaron T Beck's research group, I would consider bias as a possible confound of these results. The evidence and the methods must be available for evaluation. If this is so, then the source is irrelevant. And repeatability is very important. A scientist repeats a study to address the question of reliability, not by questioning the source. Experimenter bias is common to all science, and there are many other biases which are common to many sciences. A properly designed double-blind study is immune to personal bias. Several repetitions of the study in different laboratories moves things in the same direction. So I would have to disagree with you there. You need to learn that your personal views don't matter, even though they seem to matter in the field you have chosen. All that matters is evidence and how it is collected — not by whom, or for what personal motivations. If a Psychologist were to question the validity of Physics research I would be dubious. Why? If the psychologist has a valid reason to question the evidence, his standing as a psychologist shouldn't matter. When Alfred Wegener put forth the idea that the continents were drifting about, the fact that he was a meteorologist made no difference, only the evidence mattered. When Einstein the patent clerk suggested that physics should be completely overhauled, his status as a cog in a vast array of bureaucratic gears in a Swiss patent office mattered not at all. Only the evidence mattered. Science cannot be broken up into pieces as you are trying to do. Rigorous science has the same properties everywhere it is practiced. Bogus science also looks the same.

I would have to disagree again, my science while similar in some respects is very different to yours. There is only one science, and I have had this debate many times. Someone says psychology is scientific, it very clearly is not, at which point the debater takes the position that there are different definitions of science. There is only one definition of science. Statistics is the tool of the inexact sciences, What? The "inexact sciences"? This can be taken in a number of different ways. Statistics is a tool in nearly all sciences, without regard to the quality of the evidence. I can prove that one need only assemble 23 people for the chance that two of them share the same birthday will rise to a 50% probability. There's nothing inexact about it.

I can say that the probability of getting an uninterrupted run of eight heads while flipping a fair coin rises to 50% for 256 flips, and there's nothing inexact about it.

The inexactness comes in how the data are collected, not in evaluation — assuming valid statistical methods are chosen and carried out. and psychologists use statistics a lot, Psychologist make every conceivable effort ensure their research is as empirical as it can be. I think you meant to say something else. An empirical study is one that has only data, but no theory. An empirical study describes but doesn't explain. Much of what you describe as failure in clinical psychology is captured in the "science wars" if you're looking for Psychology to be as exact as physics, it will never happen. And there is only one science. Calling something science requires certain criteria to be met. Psychology as it is presently formulated doesn't meet the definition. There is too much hand-waving going on, too little strict experimental design, too little vigilance against hidden assumptions. Q.2 I would ask you why you feel that the general consensus in the scientific community (of clinical psychology as a science) is wrong. I never said this, and it is false. The general consensus among scientists is that psychology is not scientific. This consensus extends to the highest levels, where there is now a proposal to reform psychology to pay attention to something other than persuasion and belief to guide clinical practice. Do you think that YOU offer something that all of these individuals have not come to be aware of? This is a non-sequitur, it doesn't merit discussion, and if you were trained in science, you would realise what you are doing (arguing that a particular practice is legitimized by the absence of alternatives). I consider it a consensus because Psychology is offered as a Science degree at almost all universities, So is sociology, which it is not scientific for the same reasons that psychology isn't. This is posturing — anyone can utter the word "science," but not everyone can produce science after the word has slipped out. and that applied psychologists are consistently identified as applied scientists by their employers (e.g. health boards, industrial organisations). This was always false, and it is about to change. It is about to change because of the recent dreadful legal consequences of confusing psychologists with scientists.

In any case, "applied scientist" is a weasel expression meant to grant an unearned status to a non-scientific activity. Engineering can also be described as applied science, but that is just playing with words. Those who apply science are not engaged in science as defined — they are building, not exploring. You are free to imagine anything you like. You have just exhibited a blunt unwillingness to evaluate the evidence that describes the present state of clinical psychology, preferring instead to launch an ad hominem attack.

I made the claim that your knowledge of psychology and healthcare research methods is limited because I believe from your website that your areas of expertise are in physics and computing. Please correct me if I am wrong. You are confused. Science rejects authority and expertise. If a theory is valid, if evidence is persuasive, its source is irrelevant. If a theory is nonsense, if evidence is poor, its source is irrelevant.

Your professional training has included too few elements that could lead you to understand this basic scientific precept. First, that is utterly false. Second, this is an example of argumentum ad verecundiam (argument from authority), something scientists learn to avoid early in their training. You need the most basic kind of training in science and principles of logical argument.

In this statement, you are committing a personal attack; Only if it is false. It isn't false. You do in fact need to learn these properties of science, logic and debate. Does a freshman student have the right to object to how his scholastic position reflects on him personally? Answer: only if the position is unjust. you do not know what training I have received, do you, ... Yes, in point of fact, I have a very clear picture of what kind of training you have received. You think evidence can be judged by its source. You think there is more than one kind of science. You think a person's background determines the legitimacy of his views on scientific and technical topics. All of these beliefs are false, and all of them represent evidence pointing to a particular kind of training. it's really very insulting. If it were false, it would be insulting. It isn't false. I have just asked 2 who are studying for their PhD's in physics and biology if they have ever heard of the concept of "argumentum ad verecundiam" and they have not. This reflects sadly on those individual and their teachers, not on the precept under discussion. Scientists learn how to focus their attention on evidence to the exclusion of all else. Science is not law, it is not philosophy, and it is not a hierarchical system in which higher-ups tell those lower down what to think. What you're describing sounds very much like a philosophical concept of science, which most people tend to forget about at University. This is beyond embarrassing. You are too young to be abandoning the higher principles of reason and logic — but in your defense, it occurs to me that you aren't really abandoning them, you just haven't learned them yet. I can see that your identity as a scientist is something very important to you, and in my OPINION you seem to feel a need to demonstrate superiority over others, in an almost narcissistic fashion. If I were a narcissist, I would argue in favor of authority (a cornerstone of narcissism), and I might argue that I am usually right about matters of opinion. But my personal history shows that I am often wrong in matters of opinion, perhaps even on the left-hand side of the Gaussian curve, and I freely acknowledge this. So I fail this basic test of narcissism. But the present discussion is not about opinion, argumentum ad verecundiam is not something I invented during the weekend and the principles of science are not matters of opinion. While this is only my opinion, i find it makes it difficult to engage with you in any way which might be constructive for either of us. The basic problem is that you are trying to argue about science without actually understanding the topic, and this is typical of psychology students, evidence for which abounds on my discussion boards. Would it be possible to tone this down a bit, if only for my benefit, I understand if you do not wish to. You may see this as a personal attack but I'm really just trying to make our exchange a little easier. If you had accurately described me, I might feel differently about this, but you need to understand this is all irrelevant digression, a digression I don't care about because it isn't topical. U.S. courts of law have recently, and reluctantly, ruled that they will no longer hear cases in which 'Recovered Memories' are the primary evidence. The reason? Recovered Memory Therapy has been demonstrated to be bunk.

I agree whole heartedly with you assertion on this recovered memory nonsense, and on other pseudoscientific ideas like psychoanalysis. This is taught in first or second year cognitive psychology to undergraduates. Who do you think has disconfirmed all this nonsense, it's psychologists who have provided the contrary evidence. No, that is absolutely false (except in an involuntary sense). As to all the practices I described, society has rejected them on excellent grounds, but psychologists still practice all of them (except prefrontal lobotomy). Those who are still practicing Recovered Memory Therapy justify it on the ground that their clients believe in it. It's the same with Facilitated Communication, a discredited fad with a wide following. Professor John Mack of Harvard Medical School continued to encourage and accept at face value his clients' reports of alien abductions ... because the clients believed. I personally view myself as a behaviourist, which makes it slightly easier for me to be empirical in my approach. You need to understand that the term "empirical" is a double-edged sword. It can describe a focus on direct evidence over supposition and conjecture, but it can also refer to a field of study that has no theoretical underpinnings, what scientists disparage as "descriptive science". A "descriptive science" is one in which reality is described but not explained, and when examined that way, it's a diplomatic way of saying there's no science present.

Psychology is a descriptive science. Autism is real, it can be described, but no one knows what it is or how to treat it. Schizophrenia is real, bipolar syndrome is real, and so forth. When we apply lithium to treat bipolar syndrome, we can describe the result, but we cannot explain it. Remember that psychology is a new science and it WILL make mistakes along the way, Psychology is not a science as that term is defined. The proof is that the practitioners of clinical psychology don't pay attention to scientific principles, and those engaged in psychological research spend too much time describing and too little time explaining.

An effort to explain might lead to a theory, which might lead to a test, which might lead to falsification. But falsifiability, the most basic criterion of science, is not present in psychology to any measurable degree. however it is evolving and these useless ideas will eventually be lost to it's history. You mean, all of present practice? I agree, there's plenty of evidence for this in the history of psychology, and there is scant evidence that anything has changed in the way by which new practices are justified to replace the old ones. In fact I might voice similar opinions to you within the Psychology community; however it's really not fair to tar us all with the same brush. Another non sequitur. There are differences among non-scientists, but this is neither topical nor productive. There have been equally as wacky ideas in physics and biology ... The difference is that theories in physics and biology are testable, and those that are not testable are rejected a priori on that ground alone. Psychology can be described as an engine powered by untestable ideas. they simply don't gain as much attention because people can't actively engage with them. This is false. If someone puts forth a theory in physics, it is quickly evaluated as to its testability, and if it cannot be tested, it is quickly discarded. In physics, when you filter out the untestable theories, the field remains standing. In psychology, if someone were to filter out the untestable theories, the field would collapse in an undignified heap. When I'm in clinic some patients still ask me if I can try psychoanalysis or hypnosis with them and I have to explain to them why we don't do these things anymore, but it's evidence these silly ideas capture and retain their imagination. "We"? In psychology, there is no "we" that rejects hypnosis or psychoanalysis, and both are still widely practiced. Willing clients can and do find practitioners prepared to administer those supposedly discredited therapies. And twenty years from now, most of what is regarded as the solid base of clinical practice will have been discarded for excellent reasons. After all, who wants 20 sessions of CBT doing behavioural experiments and cognitive restructuring, when you can be in-an-out in one hour with a hypnotist? Or, even better, a witch doctor, at present a statistically valid alternative? Why in the world would I do that? You haven't bothered to inform yourself about the present state of the field. You have exhibited a deplorable level of ignorance and hubris.

Again, calling someone deplorable is a little harsh, do you have to make me an enemy I'm not writing to you to have a fight I'm more than anything very interested to hear more from your perspective. Deplorable is deplorable, and it isn't personal. If a school counselor tells you candidly what you need to study and why, do you accept the advice, or do you fall victim to an emotional reaction? Your problem is that you need to believe in psychology. This means you cannot evaluate any evidence that contradicts your emotional investment. You appear to be suffering from Confirmation Bias Syndrome, a malady that hasn't yet appeared in the DSM for a reason that should be obvious (too many psychologists suffer from it).

Again you really can't say what MY problem is; it's rude and demonstrates the fallacies you described earlier. It's only fallacious if it's false. I really want you to understand that I share with you the idea that psychology needs to improve its record in many ways, I publicly express this opinion to my colleagues. However, there are great efforts on the part of psychologists to do this, and I personally consider the evidence base for certain therapies a good one (e.g. in behavioural therapy for phobias) , You need to understand that CBT has no evidentiary basis for claims of efficacy. It is widely practiced because it seems to be better than the alternatives, but this is solely based on field experience, not reasoning or a testable theory. What I'd hope to get across is that there are good and bad psychologists, Yes, and there are good and bad astrologers, and you seem unable to focus on the topic. those who adhere to evidence-based practice and those who don't, There is no cohort of practitioners of evidence-based practice, because there isn't enough reliable evidence to construct a clinical practice. What you are actually saying is that there are those who want to adopt evidence-based practice, and those who do not. In present circumstances it is all posture (and imposture). this is true in all professions, even physics No, that is false. In physics there is no realistic option to ignore evidence. In psychology that can be a matter of professional survival. and this isn't the failing of psychology as a discipline. I think that clinical psychologists need stricter regulation Perhaps, but as to the present topic, stricter regulation can't produce science. Science emanates from less regulation, not more. Because the experimental subjects are human beings with rights, no one is willing to argue for less regulation, consequently science must assume a lower priority. and I think there is a general consensus for a move toward evidence-based practice for everyone, and that is not to say that there is NO evidence-based practice, This is false. There is no "evidence-based practice" as that term is commonly understood. If there were, there would be a testable, falsifiable theory for each part of clinical practice, and falsification would efficiently end various kinds of discredited practices. This is very clearly not so. simple hat some bad psychologists might not do it. Please don't try to create a good-psychologist/bad-psychologist dichotomy. Moralizing won't remedy any of psychology's ills. Q.3 What would you put forward as an alternative to clinical psychologist to address the needs of the individuals they see? Who cares? What is the alternative for those who must believe in astrology? Is it the responsibility of a field's critics to propose an alternative?

The sole question is whether the clinical practice of psychology is scientific, and whether it can earn society's trust on that basis. What would replace it is not topical.

I'm sorry for my tone in this debate, but I have had this exact debate about a hundred times with people coming out of the psychological training system — people who understand very little about how science works, people who don't understand they must on principle avoid argument from authority, people who think science has flavors like ice cream.