It is somewhat ironic, to me, that I am basically accusing us of having an anti-intellectual bend. However, it is not unique to psychology. There is a similar slant against "academic" computer science.

Hackers often seem to have an anti authority preference and are more likely to respect the plucky diy-er than the member of the establishment that has paid their dues. Other fields are by default assumed to be obfuscationary rather than hard or deep.

As someone who went to college for CompSci, I see good reason for a slant against computer science. The problem is that it's the wrong topic for somebody who does software development!

What we do is not science, it's engineering. Much of the time spent teaching us the science aspect is wasted, at least compared to the opportunity to use the time on engineering topics like modeling and design, documentation, etc.

For somebody building the next CRUD app, perhaps. In my line of work (EDA software), I routinely apply concepts from my computation science education on the job and in my code. Algorithms, data structures, discrete mathematics, graph theory, set theory, type theory, universal algebra, tractability theory, automata theory — these are all topics where knowledge has come in handy in my professional experience at various jobs.

Of course, concepts from other fields — biology, linguistics, and physics, for example — have also come in handy on occasion. I almost feel like there's no such thing as a "wrong topic for somebody who does software development", though some topics are certainly more relevant/useful than others.

Sounds exactly like what I would expect an Engineer to do. Apply theory to the real world. Versus a scientist who I would expect to develop, test, and prove new theories.

Be honest and think of all the time you've spent fiddling with build systems, various random tools (compilers, scripts, databases, version control, etc.).

The difference was somewhat ironically that the CS degree had more practical, hands on coding, and engineering was more theoretical, plus we had to take all the physics/chemistry/math courses to meet the requirements of the Engineering board.

You could argue that for many of us it is Software Carpentry.

I am a B.Sc. in something something computers. I have worked on some serious stuff (real distributed sensor systems across huge geographical areas and another time working on fringes of a soft-realtime image-recognition system).

Much of the time however I feel I'm much more of a software carpenter.

I actually quite enjoyed some of the stuff from "Software carpentry" online course even though I already was an engineer.

What I'm finding it difficult to find, these days, is actual mature-age accredited uni courses in computer science. Instead, you get a plethora of development courses which, as you say, are akin to engineering, not science.

Funny, the other day there was a thread about Cialdini and his books (including Influence). He has a chapter on this phenomenon (I think he called it Social Proof).

We are more receptive to ideas if it comes from "one of us".

Yes. This isn't a monolithic hive mind or fundamentalist religion. There are people from all walks of life with different ideas here. You will find trends, but no unanimity.

Psychology, with view to its practical (non-research) use has not helped me, but at least three people I know say they benefitted from cognitive behavioural therapy. Perhaps in the future, medicine and science will subordinate it to the same role of philosophy to better explain human behaviour and thinking as the latter did in less techical approaches for centuries. [2]

And yes, I am somewhat skeptical of said blog posts that cite some "new study" claiming to explain something only to be refuted or contradicted months later.

[1] http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-...

[2] Wittgenstein conceded that philosophy in the 20th century would only be useful in itsapproaches to linguistics and language

http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/05/if-you-cant-make-predic...

The article doesn't get into this.

Coming from a physics background, I will not say there's a crisis, but:

1. Few research is replicated.

2. We who did physics research were very unconcerned about whether our results could be replicated. Our journal papers were very concise, and it was common practice not to give all the details needed to replicate, partially due to paper size concerns, but very often also to keep the "secret recipe" to ourselves as a means to prevent others from conducting future research that we want to conduct (need less competition for grant money).

3. Pick any researcher in any field of physics, and ask them: "Can you list a few papers published in the last 15 years that are highly cited that you think are completely wrong?" Everyone will have a list like that. Everyone.

You and/or your publishers are terrible human beings.

Eh? Not sure why. Because we have a list of papers we don't believe? It would be naive to believe everything that is published.

I don't like the notion of withholding information, and personally I would not like to accept any paper that does that, but I'm merely stating the norm in the field.

You still have to contend with journal size restrictions. A paper in Physical Review Letters needs to be less than 3 pages. You simply cannot put in enough detail for replication in there. Nature has a page limit of 5.

1. propagating falsehoods, or flaws in published work without correcting or refuting their validity, claims etc. by your strong admission that everyone knows of such work (which is subsequently used and cited) yet "completely wrong" there must be so much crap getting published. but there is disinclination to do anything about it

2. witholding of information necessary for reproducing results of experiments as a means of discouraging co-operation with peers you view as rivals or adversaries.

The second is really serious because it effectively subverts the scientific method, undermining scientific consensus and progress. That these are "norms in the field" means nothing save for everybody's indifference and lack of cooperation.

Is the above correct?

To paraphrase what John Locke said to Newton: "Sir, it is the lesser duty of mine as Philosopher and under labourer of the Natural Philsopher, to remove the debris and furnish detail that the latter imparts to our Knowledge."

Incidentally, I noticed these cognitive biases probably apply equally well to strong AI (artificial intelligence). No matter how powerful an AI is, it's always going to lack some information, it will take time to calculate things, it will lack experience, and it will not have enough memory capacity to remember every detail. Strong AI will probably have to learn to use cognitive biases.

Huh? The article is entirely opinion. Every single thing that's in bold text is a testable hypothesis presented as pure fact. Even the selection of "problems" is pure and problematic conjecture (are these actually the most important problems? Are these actually problems at all? Would addressing these problems improve our decision making?).

There'll be no debate about research methods because there's no scientific research here. What's presented in this article might be based on observation, but it's definitely not based on scientific testing (or, to the extent it is, that evidence isn't presented).

There's nothing wrong with an article like this, per se. But shrugging off psychology research (much of which explores and attempts to rigorously test the conjectures made in this article), while also accepting this article's statements at face value, is a bit ridiculous. It amounts to "philosophy I agree with is not problematic, but science I agree with should be harshly critiqued"

It should be heartening that most science topics here are treated with this kind of Feynmanian attitude, always willing to accept contradictory evidence, always reluctant to draw strong conclusions.

For example, US space research at NASA may be awash in politics, crippled by a lack of long-term vision, and overly focused on military applications, but space is still cool.

The workings of the mind and the results of cognitive biases are fascinating, but that doesn't excuse poor statistics and a lack of rigor.

yes

Yes and no. Yes, we are all different people. No, there is not much sense to grouping us based on a single dimension. That is an excellent example of what Vonnegut called a granfalloon.