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Date:         Wed, 16 Dec 1992 08:26:48 -0800
From:         Marken@COURIER4.AERO.ORG
Subject:      Re: Presenting PCT

[From Rick Marken (921216.0800)]

Avery Andrews (921216.1551) --

Well, It's tommorrow for me now too.

>I agree that statistics without models is not nice if there is a reasonable
>prospect of doing better.

With or without models, the data of psychology (by and large) is useless.
I think this is a very important point and one worth some discussion.
Except for some operant conditioning and perceptual (single subject)
data, I can't think of any research results in psychology that would
qualify as anything other than statistical accidents -- saying absolutely
NOTHING about how or why an individual organism does ANYTHING.

I propose an exercise for anyone with easy access to the psychological
literature. Just open a journal randomly to any research article and see
what kind of data are collected and whether it could help us understand
the behavior of an organism. I really think it would help us see what all
the high falutin' theorizing in psychology is based on -- NOISE.

>But I also think that just complaining about
>it doesn't accomplish much. Like, it hasn't, has it?

I am not complaining about this at all. In fact, I have done quite a bit
of PCT research; I even have a collection of papers describing it --
the "Mind Readings" book . I have been able to fool several journals into
publishing this work by explaining how it addresses psychologists' concerns
(like how coordinated behavior works) even though the studies themselves
have seemed rather strange to the editors. The only complaint I have is not
having enough time to do PCT research -- I have to make a living after all.
I guess another complaint is that nowhere near enough people have bought
"Mind Readings" -- if they did, more people would see what the beginning
of a PCT research program looks like and I'd be able to remodel my
backyard.

The fact of the matter is, I don't care if psychologists (and other life
scientists) get it or not. I bring the point up (about the fact that PCT
requires
RESTARTING psychology from scratch) only to let those who are
interested in PCT know why it might be frustrating (and counter-productive)
to try to apply PCT to psychological data collected in the "old fashioned"
way.
In fact, the result of this effort (if not abandoned) is what I will call
Carver/Scheier PCT or C/S PCT (actually, it's a very appropriate name --
Chicken S**t PCT). This is the kind of PCT where people use some of the
terminology of the model -- but not the essence (control of perceptual input
variables). C/S PCT misses the whole point of PCT -- which is necessary if
you are going to use PCT to account for statistical results of conventionally
conducted reseach. I don't mind if people do this -- it just makes things
confusing (to the audience, not to real PCTers) so it's annoying.

I know that complaining will get us nowhere. I've been uncomplainingly doing
PCT research and modelling for twelve years (which does get us somewhere, I
hope) and I'm still doing it. That's what I want people to help out with --
but
I also know that in order to do good PCT research they MUST ignore most of
the existing psychological research. Not doing the latter is the path to C/S
PCT --
which  is the path to hell.

So consider my cautions about the value of existing psychological research
a WARNING, not a COMPLAINT.

Best

Rick
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