Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Is psychologytoday considered an authority in the psychology space?

This isn't specifically about this article but I have read a number of psychologytoday articles recently and they feel like their are opinion pieces loosely backed by studies. This article seems like pretty sound advice, but sometimes I worry that some articles get presented as cold hard scientific facts when they are really just one model or theory.




The replication crisis in psychology started by selecting high impact papers published in reputable psychological journals. Cold hard scientific facts and psychology simply do not go together. And that's not necessarily a condemnation of the field, but rather just a statement that it should be viewed as observations with proposed explanations rather than 'cold hard scientific fact.' For instance I think this little article does a good job of making clear to the reader that what they're discussing is entirely a correlation. There might be reasons for this, or it could just be entirely spurious.


No one should really be considered an authority in the field of psychology. Sure they can get things right sometimes but it's not rigorous enough fundamentally to add much validity. It's their bread and butter to spam NHST at the data until something sticks.


Definately looks like pop-psychology, a grain of salt would be worthwhile.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: