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My group had the problem of demarcation and classifying whether certain fields are considered scientific, along with their importance in the world because of this definition of ‘scientific’. In my original post, I argued that psychology is difficult to classify as fully scientific because it has unpredictability due to human nature and it’s difficult to replicate. Lindsay responses by highlighting that psychology does employ falsifiability and observe testing, making it more scientific in her view. I understand this point, and I think that I’m started to sway in that direction as well. Reygan responses by saying that while psychology may not be as precise as something like physics, the trends that psychology helps identify are valuable, especially in mental health, which I totally agree with.
The group had other debates about a few other fields, not just related to psychology. For instance, Makayla had doubts about political science, which I shared a few of. Maya compared economics to science, saying that it uses data but often fails in prediction. I think this is true, but something doesn’t necessarily need to predict something to be scientific, in my opinion. Also, Michael presented the idea that true science requires experiments, which makes certain fields hard to classify. I agree with this for the most part, but I don’t think every scientific field can be experimented. For instance, something more theoretical might not have real-world experimentation, but that doesn’t make it less scientific.
Overall, I came away from the discussion seeing science as a spectrum rather than being a strict definition of scientific or not. Fields with unpredictability are important and can contribute evidence-based knowledge that improves society without meeting a strict definition of ‘scientific’.
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