At the heart of Berezow’s argument is psychology’s lack of quantifiability and dearth of accurate terminology. The same criticism has also been leveled at other social sciences including economics and sociology and yet the debate in economics does not seem to be as rancorous as that in psychology. But it’s hardly fair to kill the message for lack of a suitable messenger. Neither is the field’s image bolstered by high-profile controversies and sloppy studies which can’t be replicated. The problem is only compounded by any number of gee-whiz popular science books purporting to use evolutionary and other kinds of “psychology” to explain human behavior. Criticism of psychology’s lack of rigor is not new people have been arguing about wishy-washy speculations in fields like evolutionary psychology and the limitations of fMRI scans for years. I also think that he misses the point.īerezow’s definition of science is not off the mark, but it’s also incomplete and too narrow. In this case the stimulus was a piece by Alex Berezow, a microbiologist, who in a short and provocative piece in the LA times argued the case that psychology is not a real science. But when these white people are focused on the success of Asian-American students, their views change.įellow Scientific American blogger Melanie Tannenbaum is flustered by allegations that psychology is not a science and I can see where she is coming from.
Specifically, he found, in a survey of white California adults, they generally favor admissions policies that place a high priority on high school grade-point averages and standardized test scores. Samson, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Miami, thinks his new research findings suggest that the definition of meritocracy used by white people is far more fluid than many would admit, and that this fluidity results in white people favoring certain policies (and groups) over others.
Critics of affirmative action generally argue that the country would be better off with a meritocracy, typically defined as an admissions system where high school grades and standardized test scores are the key factors, applied in the same way to applicants of all races and ethnicities.īut what if they think they favor meritocracy but at some level actually have a flexible definition, depending on which groups would be helped by certain policies? Frank L.
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