Narcissistic Personality - The Problem

The Problem

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In general, the professionals fall into two groups: the researchers and the clinicians. There are good guys and bad guys in each category, but the main problem is that the relationship between (legitimate scientific) research and clinical practice has been severed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

In other words, if you thought psychiatry and clinical mental health practice are based on science, you have been mislead. Speculation and "clinical studies" abound, while legitimate scientific research is ignored.

What's wrong with reliance on clinical studies? For one thing, there are a billion of them! The chances of any one being reproduced by others to test its claims are very small.

More important, you can't test 10 folks in a North Dakota clinic and call that "evidence." (This is also beginning to happen in pharmacology, because testing standards have been lowered to allow drugs into the market faster.) Even if the study is scientifically perfect, the probability of statistical error due to the small number of people in sample is so high as to make the results worse than worthless.

What's more, these studies are notorious for violating scientific method. They are not randomized. They are not controlled (by control groups to make certain the results aren't being caused by some unknown factor). They often don't even draw logical conclusions.

Their college education no longer adequately prepares clinicians to handle statistics and to conduct scientific research. Which, presumably, is why a biology major like me is astonished by some of the junk science they do. It appears that they don't know much more about how to conduct scientific research than you do, so watch out.

This means, of course, that the academics training clinicians fall largely into the "clinician" group. Yes, they must "publish or perish," but most don't publish legitimate scientific research. Instead of basing their judgments on observational data, they base them on a handful of anecdotes cherry-picked from a mountain of available data. Most publish theoretical musings based on the theoretical musings of their peers (which they treat as "evidence"), in what amount to mere essays that do nothing but pose untested hypotheses and then call them "theories."

In real science, speculation is a hypothesis, not a theory. Quantum Theory, Relativity Theory, the Theory of Evolution — all are "theories" because they explain demonstrable facts and have been abundantly tested with all valid scientific evidence supporting them. Consequently, virtually no one but flat-earther types doubts them anymore. Which doesn't mean that there still don't remain questions as to how these forces of nature actually work. For example, every reasonable scientist knows that E = mc² and that evolution happens, though they may disagree with some aspects of current explanations on how. Flat-earther types often try to hocus-pocus these disagreeing opinions into valid arguments against the theory itself, claiming that some scientists "dispute the theory" and are on their side. Baloney.

Now my just saying this is worthless unless I back it up. Below you will find evidence to back it up.

Evidence of...

seriously flawed methodology

ignoring relevant data

unsound conclusions

inappropriate comparative judgments based on pure divination instead of data

passing off as "evidence" a mere smattering of anecdotes selected from available observational data

appealing to speculative "theory" as "evidence"

presuming a consensus of opinion and then calling that "evidence"

failing to cite references to supportive scientific data they claim exists

divining questionable inferences regarding others' perceptions with no independent corroboration

appealing to hypothetical counterfactuals = arguments from a vacuum (a kind of illogic)

© 2004 – 2008, Kathleen Krajco — all rights reserved worldwide.
The URL of this page is: http://www.narcissism.operationdoubles.com/problem_psychology.htm.
It was last updated on 3/6/2008.
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