The "opinion" had you bother to read it, was proffered by an actual scientist, and an editor of a scientific publication.
The piece you have linked is part of the
Los Angeles Times' "
Blowback" series of opinion articles.
"Blowback" is a place for readers of the L.A. Times to make their opinions heard. The
L.A. Times describes it as "a cross between an Op-Ed and a letter to the editor."
The opinion of the psychologist in question (that psychology is not scientific enough, which happens to be true) does not negate the opinions of the hundreds of thousands of psychologists and other scientists out there who know that psychology is, in fact, a science.
It is rather incredible to me that you believe you can wipe out a hundred years of research and an entire field of science on the basis of a single letter to the editor of the L.A. Times!
This is exactly what we're talking about. You Republicans can deny whole fields of study on the basis of a single letter to the editor of a newspaper. You create your own universes in which global climate change is a conspiracy of all the world's climate scientists. In which evolution is not biology. And in which psychology is not science. You accept nonsense as fact when the nonsense conforms better to your party's ideology. You do not live in a world of facts, you live in a world of party dogma. When that dogma is contradicted by truth, then it is necessary to deny the truth.
Now let's see who wrote the tome you put so much stock in.
So, he doesn't even claim to be a scientist. Rather someone who can explain the pseudo-science of psychology. Just what are Mr. Money's credentials?
Mr. Mooney has a BA in English and lists his occupation as journalist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Mooney_(journalist)
It is perfectly acceptable for a non-scientist to summarize the findings of scientists. The editor of Scientific American, Mariette DiChristina, is a
journalist by training. The editor-in-chief of Popular Science, Jacob Ward, describes himself as a "television
journalist." The managing editor of The Discovery Channel, Ted Koppel, is also a "television
journalist." None of these people have any training in science whatsoever. But that does not mean that they cannot describe for us the findings of science.
Scientists are trained in science, not English. That's why most scientific reporting is done by English majors, not scientists. Indeed, that's why most writing/reporting of
every type (politics, entertainment, science, business, travel, etc.) is done by English majors.
Not politicians, entertainers, scientists, businessmen, travelers, etc.
So to review. We should discard the authoritative opinion given by an expert in the field of science and accept the writings of a journalist who possesses no academic credential on the very subject he's chosen to write about as Gospel truth.
No. To review, we should accept the opinions of the
overwhelming majority of experts in the field, not the opinion of
one person as the "gospel truth."
This is the problem with the right. You do not accept evidence, reason, or scholarship. You cling to single opinions of single individuals as dogmatic and unarguable - even when that opinion is extreme and not shared by anyone else in the field. The criteria for acceptance is not how well an idea is regarded by the scientific community. It is how well that idea molds itself to Republican Party ideology. That's religion, not science.
Has everybody on the left taken leave of their senses?
I would ask if everybody on the right had taken leave of their senses, but I already know the answer to that. Sense has not been valuable to you people since ~1980.
