Introduction¶

Welcome to Research Methods in Psychology, the Stony Brook edition!

Goals of Science Education¶

In 2009, Bruce Alberts, the editor of Science (a leading scientific publication) published an editorial [Alb09] in which he described the strange mismatch between science education as it is practiced in classrooms around the world and the way one would educate future scientists. Citing a report by the U.S. National Academies [C+07], he highlights four learning objectives of any science education:

know, use, and interpret scientific explanations of the natural world
prepare students to generate and evaluate scientific evidence and explanations
understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge
participate productively in scientific practices and discourse

In practice, actual science education strongly emphasizes the first of these (and almost exclusively the “know” part). As Dr. Alberts put it, instead of, “learning how to think scientifically, students are generally being told about science and asked to remember facts”.

This is may be true in many scientific programs, but seems particularly true in programs such as psychology. Within undergraduate psychology programs, there tend to only two required courses that actually teach students how to do more than know: statistics and research methods. These courses are often students’ least favorite courses in the entire curriculum, which means that they are tolerated rather than emphasized. This is a shame, but perhaps not entirely surprising. Not every academic program should resemble a trade school program. On the other hand, a lack of critical thinking hurts everyone. Simple, intuitive answers are appealing even when dealing with complex problems. Confidence is often as persuasive, if not more persuasive, than evidence. In short, it is not hyperbolic to say that a fully realized science education constitutes part of “basic education of everyone in the modern world” [Alb09].

Consumers of Science¶

But I don’t want to be a scientist! This is a common refrain when students learn that they will be required to take a course in research methods. This is totally reasonable. However, the discussion above should foreshadow the natural response. Students have enrolled in a scientific program and the majority of the objectives of a science education are, strangely, the responsibility of one or two courses. If learning how to do science is so undesirable, it’s not clear why students enrolled in an scientific program like psychology.

However, the other response, also previewed above, is that science education is not just for future scientists. If you plan on being a “consumer of science”, and it is difficult to see how you will not, then knowing how science is done is of critical importance. Here’s an example. You see a fresh headline: “Scientists: No Safe Level of Chocolate Consumption!” But you love chocolate. What to do? In a panic, you read the article thoroughly, but there is little detail about the study itself. Now what? You could, conceivably, go grab the original scientific report. But how do you do that? Even if you could get your hands on it, what would do with it? It’s written for a scientific audience and the writing is technical. Even if you could sift through the writing, how would you evaluate the study? Was design of the study appropriate for the research question? Did the authors use appropriate statistical procedures? Did they interpret the results of those procedures correctly? Without the ability to answer these questions, you will be forced to choose blindly: death by chocolate or a sad, chocolate-less life.

Epistemology¶

John Moore [Moo99] writes that science is a special way of learning about the world (including chocolate). People, both the general public and those who have completed formal educational programs, are often confused by this. It is common to hear people talk about “science” as if it is body of knowledge; a set of “facts” and “laws” that must be accepted if one is to be a sensible, scientifically-minded individual. But science is not knowledge in the same way that cooking is not food. This is why the conventional approach to scientific education is so deficient. It given the impression that studying “all the facts” is all one needs. But evidence accumulates and shifts and knowledge of answers to old questions do not apply to new questions. Bodies of knowledge cannot keep up with a changing world, but the tools to tackle questions can.

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy concerned with the question “What do we know?” There are all sorts of routes to knowledge. None of them (or almost none) can guarantee the sort of knowledge we ultimately desire: true knowledge. But the scientific method gives us our best shot. Ready?

References¶

Alb09(1,2): Bruce Alberts. Redefining science education. 2009.
C+07: National Research Council and others. Taking science to school: Learning and teaching science in grades K-8. National Academies Press, 2007.
Moo99: John Alexander Moore. Science as a way of knowing: The foundations of modern biology. Harvard University Press, 1999.

Credits¶

Full license details can be found here. This textbook is an adaptation of one originally written by Paul C. Price (California State University, Fresno) and adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. The original text is available here.

This adaptation constitutes the Stony Brook Edition by Christian C. Luhmann (Stony Brook University). This edition incorporates the Brooklyn College edition by Matthew J. C. Crump (Brooklyn College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The Brooklyn College edition incorporates the second Canadian edition by Rajiv S. Jhangiani (Kwantlen Polytechnic University) and I-Chant A. Chiang (Quest University Canada) which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and incorporates the second U.S. edition authored by Dana C. Leighton (Southern Arkansas University) and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Research Methods in Psychology - Stony Brook Edition by Paul C. Price, Rajiv Jhangiani, I-Chant A. Chiang, Dana C. Leighton, Matthew J. C. Crump, & Christian C. Luhmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.