Abstract
In outlining a case against “the scientific method”, Shea[1] argued that a rigidly-defined scientific method does not serve human interests very well. Since even physics can't claim to represent “absolute scientific truth,” there is no reason to believe that methods which were developed in the physical sciences can be successfully applied in human affairs. Psychiatry, as a human-centred discipline, is particularly poorly served by the scientific method. Any applications of that method to such essentially human affairs as love, hate, religion and the unconscious are bound to fail. We need to guard against attempts by practitioners of a “hard” science (of psychiatry) to claim the whole of our discipline as their own. This is an old argument,[2] one which, at first glance, has a powerful appeal, but Shea has slipped into a number of familiar errors which vitiate his case.
Firstly, he has failed to define his enemy, science, assuming that everyone knows just what “it” is. This is not true. A proper definition shows that there is no single science but many, that they consist of a range of projects of limited scope designed to answer certain specific questions within restricted fields. While there has been some convergence recently, there is no such thing as “the grand united theory of everything,” and there never will be. One definition says: “Science is a rational, empirical endeavour within a materialist ontology which is directed at elucidating the basic matter-energy relationships of the universe and the informational states which control them.” Therefore, science does not address such essentially human affairs as love, hate, religion, etc., meaning Shea can't criticise science on the grounds that it says nothing about them.
By failing to define his target, Shea has erected a straw man. I have never heard of a reputable scientist who claims to know “absolute scientific truth,” or even to be searching for it, so it is unfair to criticise physics on the grounds that it isn't absolute truth, and then to say that because physics isn't absolute truth, psychiatry doesn't need to aspire to the same ends (e.g. of measurement and modelling) and can't be held accountable to those ends.
Secondly, there is no such single thing as “The Scientific Method.” There are lots of scientific methods, some of which are applicable across a broad range of fields and some of which are not. Collectively, they are directed at stripping prejudice and bias from our exploratory efforts, allowing us progressively better views of things as they really are (e.g. changing from flat earth theories to round earth). Researchers are in a serendipitous free-for-all, constantly looking for new methods they can adapt to their own fields. There are lots of other methods of enquiry with the same progressive aim, including literary, historical, mathemat ical and philosophical, but these are not generally applicable to empiri cal fields, meaning the natural sciences. Natural sciences favour statistical methods of eradicating prejudice, because they are clear, easily standardised, easily applied, culture-free and don't require such intensive training. They don't guarantee to eradicate bias, but they help.
Conveniently, statistics can be written as algorithms, which makes life much easier for researchers on limited budgets. Some people believe that science is only about statistics but they are wrong. Science is mainly about bold and elegant theories which make sense of chaos, and the truly great advances in science have always vaulted far beyond the limited reach of statistics. Statistics is for pedestrian science, a case of searching for the key under the streetlamp, while the great thinkers rely on intuition to launch themselves into the darkness.[3]
Thirdly, he avers: “At the root of the scientific method is the belief that all things of importance are quantifiable and hence measurable in some way….” This is just not the case. At the heart of the group of scientific methods is the belief that some beliefs simply cannot be rendered in a form which would allow a rational choice between them. For example, since there is no rational way of choosing between the different creation myths, they are therefore disqualified from scientific consideration. That's all. Anybody who wishes can consider them, but nobody can say that science has shown Adam did or didn't eat the apple. Pyramidologists have long measured the Great Pyramids in staggering detail, hoping thereby to predict all manner of wonders, but their fundamental beliefs are incoherent and cannot be questioned, so their activity isn't science and nobody has to take them seriously. Any natural phenomenon can be pinned down one way or another, even if only by its effect on other bodies. Anything that can't be measured probably doesn't exist in the form its supporters think it does.
He further states that his straw man's belief that science is only about counting is “dangerous thinking.” No, it isn't, it's safe thinking — but only in comparison with all the other sorts of thinking that went before. Edward Jenner sat in a farmyard counting, and soon arrived at one of the great discoveries in medicine, one from which all of us have benefited. Counting pockmarks revealed the truth far quicker than reading chickens' entrails or praying. Of course, not everything can be counted, which Horatio knew long before Einstein was born. Counting appeals to certain personality types and suits certain questions, but it certainly isn't “all things to all men,” at all times and in all questions. It is just one scientific method among many, so it isn't true, as Shea implies, that since some statistical associations aren't valid, all statistics are bad, e.g. the old “tea and suicide” case. The central truth of counting is not that it is always bad, but that it is only as good as the theoretical framework that dictates what to count: as our grandparents said, “ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer,” or “rubbish in, rubbish out” in modern form.
Having argued that science can't tell us everything about human affairs (which only a few fanatics have ever claimed,[4]) Shea insists that we have to give credence to matters of opinion or faith because what they tell us is real, even though it can't be counted. He effectively says: “The existance of the unconscious can't be proven or disproven but I think it's real so anybody who disagrees is burying his head in the sand.” What weight should we give to something that is genuinely invisible? Similarly, the reason it is “somewhat unfashionable” to talk about spiritual matters in psychiatry these days is because nobody knows what is true. Lots of people say they do, but how can the cautious be reassured? Shall we crucify homosexuals, or amputate hands in the clinic? Perhaps a Bacchanalia would help the neurotically inhibited, or even a dose of mescaline? And, who knows, human sacrifice may even make a comeback. The whole point about science is that everything doesn't go. Science restricts the field of legitimate activity to what is relatively safe, reasonably effective and reproducible (meaning probably free of prejudice).
There are many other faults in Dr Shea's cri du coeur, but pursuing them would miss his point, which is that anybody who claims to have a scientific method that tells us everything we need to know about human beings is wildly, even dangerously, mistaken. There is no such thing, but some of the worst excesses in history have taken a self-righteous, reductive scientism as their starting point, e.g. the direct path from eugenics to Nazi death camps, or from Marxist economics to Stalin's Gulag. Next to these horrors, the ghastly crimes of organised religion seem rather anaemic. What distinguishes all the great criminal movements in history is the belief: “This says I am right and you are wrong and, if you oppose me, I can destroy you.” It doesn't matter what higher authority the assailant uses to justify the crime (religion, science, you name it), what counts is the failure to recognise another person's right to hold different views. A human-centred belief system which tolerates dissension cannot fall into this error, and is therefore the safer approach. Since science is also about safe, unprejudiced opinion, a humanist psychiatry constitutes a powerful argument against untrammelled scientism. That modern science can't account for such ephemera as love has never stopped the great scientific thinkers from loving their families.
I have assembled a lengthy and detailed case against scientism in psychiatry, but none of the “scientific” journals will review it, including this one. It is available electronically, at my website: www.futurepsychiatry.com.