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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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The Washington Post reports: Florida schools drop AP Psychology after state says it violates the law

If only.

Dateline 1723: Gazette de France reports: Venerable University of Utrecht drops medical classes after state finds it violates the law against heresy.

What tragedy! Where will now Dutch students study the four humors science, where will they learn the proper methods and proper astrological signs for bloodletting and applying leeches?

Even by standards of modern sciences, psychology stands out as complete fraud.

Not all of it - there is one part of psychological science - one involving IQ and racial differences in IQ - that reliably replicates and stands to scrutiny. Something tells me that Florida psychology courses do not cover this.

One can only wish that DeSatanis got his pitchfork out for real and cleaned this nest of superstition Khmer Rouge style. One can dream.

It appears that unit 1 (10-14% of exam) AP Psych is about general research methodology. Unit 2 (8-10%) is about Biological Bases of Behavior, such as the endocrine system and the brain. Unit 3 (6-8%) is about Sensation and Perception. Unit 4 (7-9%) is re Learning, including Pavlov and Skinner, Unit 5 (13-17%) is Cognitive Psychology, including memory retrieval and storage and Biases and Errors in Thinking. Unit 6 (7-9%) is Development Psychology. That's a awful lot of baby to throw out with the bathwater.

Even in that Twitter link, Psychology replicated better than Oncology and about even with economics. I agree that psychology is mostly bullshit, but given the abysmal replication rates of other sciences, I agree with the person posting the images — we have a giant problem with replication outside of the hard sciences (and I suspect that a lot of the softer bits of hard sciences like astronomical sciences, or ecology or zoology) such that I don’t think you can simply take it at face value.

Even in that Twitter link, Psychology replicated better than Oncology and about even with economics.

No one said the Khmer Rouge has to stop at psychology.

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