On the scientific formation of future psychologists

On the scientific formation of future psychologists

 

Jacques P. Beaugrand, professeur

 

Département de Psychologie,
Université du Québec à Montréal

 

 beaugrand.jacques@uqam.ca

 

                                                               

Conférence présentée sur invitation à Oppinicon II: State of the Discipline psychology/L'état de la discipline psychologie. Octobre 1984. Oppinicon Lake, Ont. Can.

 

       Scientific psychology covers a knowledge field having basic, applied, and technological aspects. Basic psychology can be characterized, among other things, by a domain of knowledge composed of real entities (functional individual nervous systems, sociosystems), problematic (cognitive problems concerning the nature and laws of the domain) and methodics consisting exclusively of scrutable (checkable, analysable, criticizable) and justifiable (explainable) procedures, the scientific method having the first place in that respect. The formation and training of future researchers in psychology should be like the one given to all other scientists in the physical and biological sciences. As for other factual sciences, the aims of basic psychology also include the search for, and the use of, laws of nature, and its supreme goal as a science is to understand reality. Such understanding can only be obtained with the use of laws.

       Applied psychology is the use of scientific knowledge (and methods) to investigate problems whose solution may acquire practical importance, e.g. for institutions, industry and education. In this sense, applied psychology does not follow automatically from basic scientific psychology. Doing applied psychology, like doing basic psychology, is conducting research aiming at acquiring new knowledge. Knowledge acquired or derived from basic psychology may be used in the process, but it does not entail from this that applied research is only a matter of routine application: applied psychology would not be research proper if it did not yield new knowledge. The applied scientist exploits and enriches knowledge that has been produced by basic research. The applied scientist is expected to make discoveries but not to uncover deep properties or general laws. He/she does not intend to. He/she has a more practical aim, even if it is a long term one. His/her scope or domain is thus also narrower than that of the basic scientist. For ex., instead of studying learning in general, the applied psychologist may study the learning of logical inference by children using microprocessors, with an eye on possible ways of improving their performance. Applied scientific psychology lies between basic scientific psychology and psychological technology/intervention or psychotechnology, but their borderlines are not neatly defined. The aim of psycho-intervention, which includes psychiatry, clinical, sport, industrial, commercial, war, ..., and educational psychology, is to control and change reality through the design and execution of artificial systems (i.e. intervention programs) and plans of action based on scientific knowledge gained through basic or applied psychology research. It is action oriented, but it is scientific as long as it uses some scientific knowledge. So far, we have mentioned the basic® applied® technology feed-forward of scientific knowledge. But there also exists feedback in the opposite direction: scientific applied psychology supplies basic psychology, and psycho-intervention (psychotechnology) supplies both basic and applied research with new materials, counterexamples, problems and psycho-intervention is also justified to ask to explain why certain proposal do work, although it must be shown first that they really work! These three moments of science form a system of "production and circulation of knowledge, artifacts and services" (Bunge, 1983).

       Such a scientific system capable of evaluation of its knowledge and of its services is more likely to circulate information and offer services that are genuine, i.e. at least partially true, and valuable when compared to practices which are disconnected from their basic and applied scientific counterparts. Beware of bogus knowledge and of phoney services which are, false either because they refer to non-existents or because they represent existents in an utterly false manner. We do not pretend that science has the monopoly of truth. The telephone directories of any large city contain certainly more true statements than all behavioural sciences put together. But these happen not to be the result of scientific endeavour. While scientific enquiry pursues truth, it is not characterized by final truth but rather by, among other important traits, corrigibility. This is not the case with pseudoscience which is a body of beliefs upheld in the face of either lack of evidence, absence of any alternate scientific explanation, or even negative evidence. True, pseudoscientists, like any other mortals can accidentally hit on true hypotheses but they do not bother to investigate them scientifically.

       Psychology programs in our universities aim at giving a sound scientific formation to future psychologists but the practice of psychology itself is too often pseudoscience. Indeed, the systemicity just described, is more a fiction than a reality in several fields of psychology. Most often the technological part is completely disconnected from the basic and applied ones. This latter branch of psychology is not the application of knowledge, models, theories or even methods tested by the formers to the specific domain of application. It is composed of a community of believers who call themselves scientists or at least psychologists although they do not conduct any scientific or technological research. The host society supports them for practical reasons and complaisance, or because of its own and our own ignorance. Their domain contains unreal or at least not certifiably real entities, immaterial entities or processes, such as disembodied minds and superegos, and the like. Their aim is essentially practical rather than cognitive and they are not concerned by the typical goals of scientific research, namely the finding of laws and their use to understand and predict facts. On the contrary, their methodic summarize to procedures that are not checkable by alternative ones and their epistemology makes room for the arguments from authority and for strange modes of cognition accessible only to initiates. Their view of the world is tradition-bound and dogmatic rather than scientific; it changes very little in the course of time and, when it happens to change, it does so only in apparent aspects as the result of public controversy and external pressure rather than genuine scientific research.

       Pseudoscientists are extremely dangerous to science because they pass wild speculation and uncontrolled data for results of scientific research, deform the scientific approach. As faculty members they often enjoy the popularity of young students because "it is fun and easy", whereas genuine science is hard and therefore elitist. Their public credibility comes from the fact that they have studied in the same faculty programs as genuine scientists. As professionals they work in the same profession together with genuine scientific practicians and that they are recognized by the same corporations. We have to put an end to such a practice in our profession. In the rest of this paper, we shall examine briefly some of the means at hand to attain this important objective.

       On way is to reject clearly pseudoscientific practices in psychology. Non-scientific topics and practices traditionally part of the psychological curriculum should be immediately banned from the formation of future scientists of psychology. At least, let us keep future scientists away from the obligation to receive training in sorcery during their formation. Science and dogma are deeply incompatible methodologically. They do not occupy different territories but encroach frequently with each other and are bound to clash at critical points. It is extremely important that students be convinced that belief without positive empirical evidence together with the support of the bulk of scientific knowledge is merely dogma. And dogmatism is incompatible with psychological science and technology. Therefore, whoever wishes to form a coherent and consistent student must opt either for dogma or science. We must opt for science or else we are going to get extinct in a near future.

       Once that non-scientific topics and practices are eliminated from the curriculum, they can be replaced by scientific ones or by subjects which are related to the foundations, philosophy, history of sciences and technologies, to their relations with society, or to their applications in psychology. It is imperative to renew the teaching of sciences and technology at the level of psychology programs, and to increase the scientific content of our curriculum. Not only do we have to form scientists in psychology, but it is also our duty to encourage the full participation of our students to the technological society and to promote their adaptation to new jobs created for psychologists. Another way of fighting pseudoscience in psychology is to improve the quality and universality of the scientific topics which are taught to future psychologists. A list of the truly scientific courses offered in the psychology programs boils down to the study of the experimental method and statistical techniques. More on the general method of science, the history of sciences, their philosophy and foundations should be added. It is not true that psychology as a science is different from other sciences. The same basic method is used; only the domain of objects to which it is applied, together with some special techniques, remain (partly) specific to psychology. Let us join frankly the great family of sciences.

       In addition, a philosophical perspective on psychology is welcome at this crucial moment in the development of psychology as a young science. As we all know, the influence of philosophy on psychology was extremely important. It was an important motivation for behaviorism: not only did psychology have to leave the prescientific apron-string of mother philosophy but it also had to eradicate all philosophical ingredients from the study of behaviour. Behaviorists believed that they could obtain these effects by sticking to "positive facts" and by refraining from any hypothesis formulation. In so far as behaviorism made some significant contribution to psychology, it did not stick to its narrow-minded program inspired by primitive positivism. A lot of concepts (i.e. conditioning and sensitization) were in vogue, although definitively trans-empirical.

       It is time to initiate a serious philosophical reflexion on our science which is slowly but surely ongoing important adaptations and mutations but not yet in any paradigmatic manner. These reflexions are to serve as a general outlook for the next decades and refresh our ontology, epistemology and ethos, and help us obtain greater scientific maturity and recognition.

       Critical scientific realism suggests us to abandon the truncated ontology proposed by neo-behaviorism for a more authentic and natural domain of facts, which would not be restricted to overt behaviour, but would as well cover other facts occurring in or produced by, the brain (ex: cognitive ones). We should abandon an immature conception of scientific knowledge which rejects explanation and theorizing altogether, for and adult theory of knowledge. From narrow minded objectives and a shortened version of the scientific method psychology should assume more complete and ultimate objectives, using the scientific method in a more integral manner.

       Philosophy will probably help us to recognize ontologically the existence of a psychological level, rooted in neural activity and in deeper levels, but having new and emergent properties, subjected to their own (psychological) laws, to be incorporated into truly psychological theories and thus made understandable and predictable by the science of psychology.

       But while we are still waiting for a new epistemology for psychology, the quality of the teaching and training of future scientists could be improved by inventing new didacticals and by writing fresher and more universally scientific handbooks for the future scientists of psychology. But a sure way would be to study cases where the relevance of basic topics for applied ones is clear and to show how their transformation into psychotechniques was rendered possible. @ As a fourth solution, we have to change the public image of psychology. The difficult task of forming scientists in psychology begins right now of selecting the students who will enter our programs. But we can only select the best ones from the group that self-recruited in response to the image of psychology we (as a discipline) project in colleges and in society in general. Our image is not only fuzzy but incoherent to any candidate having attained a formal level of cognition. College students are not well informed about the fact that psychology is also a science. They come to psychology because they perceive it as an especially soft science and because obtaining a diploma in psychology is an honourable way to become a socially recognized helper. The students who we would like to follow our programs of formation and to become scientists in psychology (basic, applied, and psychotechnology) are recruited by other sciences and technologies. We have to develop means to recruit young people whose major interests are for the sciences and technologies; this can be done, as suggested above, through important modifications of our actual academic curriculum (more scientific), but also by allowing students of the sciences and technologies to more easily switch to psychology after the completion of their B.Sc. or even master's degree. For example, it would be extremely welcome for an easier passage to exist between the computer, physiological sciences and cognitive psychology.

       The public image of psychology has to be changed even if the actual state of the art of giving psychological services does not correspond exactly to what we would like it to be. The public in general will become more demanding and the profession will have to meet the new requirements. Future psychologists will value science as the highest type of knowledge about nature and society, and therefore as the best ground for the rational and effective control of reality when necessary.

  

RECOMMENDATIONS

R1.      That a national comity for scientific psychology be formed on a permanent base. Its main task will be to promote psychology as a science in universities, colleges and in the public.

R2.      That the CPA, either directly or through its scientific comity, ask officially some philosophers and scientists in psychology to form a special study group whose task will be to formulate and to propose a modern epistemology for psychology. Its ontology, its theory of knowledge, its problematic, objectives and methodics should be covered.

R3.      That the CPA suggest to the psychology departments of Canadian universities and to the professional corporations that the scientific content of the formation of future psychologists be increased and that sciences and technologies as well as their history and implications for psychology and society have to be fully covered by programs of formation. In addition, sciences should be taught in a more universal manner, not to be restricted to the application of specific methods to psychology.

R4.      That the scientific content of introductory courses in psychology at the collegial level be increased and that topics of the definitively humanistic type be greatly reduced in importance in these courses. Students must learn that strictly humanistic solutions in psychology are only of the temporary type and have to be replaced by scientific (but still humanistic) ones. That a comity be formed to study the content of introductory courses in psychology at the collegial level.

R5.      That college students be asked to follow more courses in the sciences and technologies before being admitted in psychology programs at the university level. That this prerequisite serves as a condition for admittance in psychology programs.

R6.      That pseudoscientific practices in psychology be publicly denounced by scientific and professional associations, just as ethical and professional faults are.

R7.      That the apprenticeship of scientific research (basic and applied) and of psycho-intervention be carried out while the student participates to research teams and private practices capable of giving him/her competent supervision and some financial support.

R8.      That the undergraduate formation be the occasion for students to assimilate the three dimensions of scientific psychology, namely basic research, applied research, and psychotechnology (intervention).

R9.      That specialization into either basic/applied research or intervention occurs only during the graduate studies in psychology. That this specialization corresponds to distinct formation profiles and lead to different terminal diplomas (Ph.D., D.Ps.).

R10.    That the importance of the master's degree in psychology (minimum of two curricular years, plus a dissertation in most Québec French universities) be greatly reduced to promote that doctoral studies be undertaken by the students immediately after the conclusion of their undergraduate studies. The importance of the master's degree can be reduced by having it become facultative, serving only as a safety valve and as an occasional passage from one program (or profile) to another. Also, the master's degree has to recognized as insufficient by the professional corporations (of Quebec and of New Brunswick) for legal practice in their respective provinces. In addition, the master's dissertation has to be abandoned, and the practicum greatly reduced, to become part of the doctoral formation.

R11.    At the doctoral level, that the research training of future psycho-interveners be greatly reduced comparatively to what it is presently in psychology programs of the "scientific-professional" type. It has to be replaced by training in psychotechnology, namely by the application of scientific knowledge to intervention, to the planning of intervention and to its control by efficient measurement of the obtained effects.

R12.    That the doctoral research remains only for future researchers in basic and applied psychology but that the thesis itself be gradually replaced by scientific publication.

REFERENCE

 

Bunge, M. (1983). Épistémologie. Paris: Maloine.