Pseudo-science

This is meant as a discussion topic. Since I have not provided supporting articles here, please ask me if you are THAT interested and I will gladly provide cites from my library on cognitive studies. Also, if I’m wrong, tell me why. I am testing my own critical thinking skills with this post.

Over the last couple of years, as I have developed experience in the science of Human Factors and Human Factors Engineering (they are different; one being a pure research endeavor, the other an engineering discipline), I have begun to notice something that is very troubling. This phenomenon is most noticeable in the field of psychology, but other sciences tend to succumb to it as well. Nobody seems to follow the scientific method anymore. They believe everything they read. Critical thinking seems to be a buzzword that has lost its true meaning.

The most easily identifiable error that is consistently identifiable (again, especially in the field of psychology) is the error in the scientific method that is identified as the logical fallacy of "affirming the consequent".

Affirming the consequent is the error of conducting a scientific experiment, but rather than looking for data that disproves your hypothesis, only looking for data that supports it. The result of this is setting yourself up to never fail. I.E. your hypothesis will always turn out to be true.
Doing this once is a misuse of the scientific method and results in junk science. But when you never repeat an experiment, never apply critical thinking to try and alleviate the tendency to affirm the consequent, and then proceed to build further work upon this faulty foundation, there is a problem. An entire body of work is created that may have face validity but mistakes face validity for fact. Confound this further with people who, even though having been told throughout their lives to "not believe everything they read", proceed to take your work as vetted fact and you can understand that an entire modern research industry could have a very serious problem.

Now offering pure criticism in a posting without offering a solution is egregious. I offer this as a solution: When reading, even something that is known to be absolute fact, assume it to be wrong. Don't automatically believe anything. This assumption could easily turn into peer bashing, so it should then be followed with some questions. Why is it wrong? What is good about it? Is there a better way to do it? Can it be fixed? So on and so forth. This is basic critical thinking. With a reeducation on critical thinking, perhaps the pseudo-sciences can be brought back to the methodological fold.

Furthermore, publish failures. Every now and then an enterprising researcher will actually do this, and in the process will learn more about his research topic than he dreamed possible.
Finally, and unfortunately the least likely to occur due to how funding works in this day and age, repeat the experiment/research your work is based upon before embarking on your own research journey. The scientific method insists that studies be repeatable in order to confirm the conclusions reached. If it's never BEEN repeated and you base research off of it, then you might as well not pay attention to it to begin with. Afterall, how do you know that the results are correct unless you've checked for yourself.

It's a complex topic overall. Yet with a little intellectual humility and honesty, squishy sciences can become something more worthwhile.

We're not there yet. I recommend taking anything a Psychologist (especially one with a PhD) tells you with a very large grain of salt.