> There is no such nexus. The brain can be studied scientifically, the mind cannot be. This would be like creating a new cosmology department at a university that stands at the nexus of astronomy and astrology.

Okay, you go to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science at MIT and tell them that they are all quacks. But if you ask me, it's you who are the quack, not they.

> If this were true in medicine, doctors would have to stop offering treatments. But the absence of science has had no effect on psychologists

You act as if medicine has always had the scientific foundations that it now has. It's been getting more an more scientific over time, and it still has a long way to go. Psychology is currently at the state medicine was 100 years ago. And that is simply because it's a more difficult field to study scientifically. We didn't even have the conceptual frameworks to study it scientifically until computer science and artificial intelligence were invented. This is why Behaviorism was such a bust. It attempted to study psychology scientifically, but the prerequisite conceptual frameworks did not yet exist.

Btw, how are you going to rationalize the fact that primary care physicians routinely hand out antidepressants for depression, a disorder identified and classified by psychology?

> If doctors offered the kinds of treatments that psychologists offer, on the basis they offer them, they would be arrested.

Nonsense. The most common psychological treatment is just talk therapy, which has been proven effective, at least for treating depression. In the worst case, it's harmless and acts as a decent placebo. (Which is a real effect, of course.)

> It's not credible to say that psychology is (a) a science but (b) has nothing to offer clinicians. One, or the other. Not both.

Clearly logic escapes you. Cognitive psychology is a science. This is indisputable. It hasn't developed to the point where it offers much clinical advice. It does offer some, but mostly for mnemonic techniques for those who are suffering from cognitive impairments.

> If psychology wants to be regarded as a science, let them craft testable theories that define the field,

That's what cognitive psychology is doing. See previous discussion on paradigm shifts.

> Such theories would place psychology on a par with real sciences, each of which is defined by central, testable, falsifiable theories

Cognitive psychology is full of them.

> Each of these theories is a clear statement that unites its field.

I don't think you've ever studied chemistry. Organic chemistry is as much about all the exceptions, as it is about the rules. It's as sloppy as science can get. And necessarily so, because chemistry is a useful but problematic simplification of the underlying physics. No one even understands why or how lithium ion batteries even work. And yet we use them every day. How unscientific! (And that's not even organic chemistry.)

> Psychologists can and do offer treatments that aren't vetted by research. The reason? Psychology is not guided by science.

Clinical psychology may not be guided so much by science. That's a far cry from claiming that cognitive psychology is not science.

> As a first step, expel clinical psychology from the field.

Psychology is not a single field. Some subfields of psychology are scientific. E.g., cognitive psychology. And some not so much. E.g., clinical psychology. Many disciplines have schisms in them, especially when undergoing a paradigm shift. See previous discussion on paradigm shifts.

> As a second step, forbid any treatments not vetted by scientific research.

There's no central psychological organization that could do this.

> Conservation of energy is the explanation.

And in behavioral psychology, stimulus response is the explanation.

> It's disingenuous to claim that the conservation idea isn't an explanation

That's good, because that's not what I claimed. I claimed that physics offers no explanation for why the conservation laws apply, which is analogous to Behaviorism offering no explanation for why stimulus response applies. Both were low-level observed phenomena that were then used to explain higher-level phenomena.

> Need I add that there is nothing remotely like it in psychology for depth and
comprehensiveness.

Psychology is an intrinsically much more difficult field than physics. Physics is the Platonic ideal of science. Comparing other fields to it is what is disingenious. An honest debater might compare psychology to biology or economics or organic chemistry, fields where a grade school notion of what science is does not apply nearly so well.

And even in physics there are the type of divisions that you are describing. E.g., there is serious debate, for instance, on whether super string theory is a worthwhile approach, or not. Or even whether it is properly scientific.

> Meanwhile, in psychology, virtually all ideas are excuses for debates between differing factions.

I'm not aware of any serious debates against cognitive psychology. Other subfields are just a lot more impatient than cognitive psychologists are.

> As an example, one group thinks focusing a lot of attention on a few activities, or one activity, is a sign of mental illness (Asperger Syndrome). Another group thinks this exact same behavior is the only way to accomplish anything beyond the norm (the "Grit" faction).

This sort of thing happens all of the time in other sciences. Syndromes in medicine are very comparable, since for syndromes, no cause has usually been determined, and whether the syndrome is actually caused by a single disease or a number of different diseases is up for debate. And yet syndromes are treated by doctors anyway.

> And they don't bother to try to resolve the chasm between their views as scientists would do.

See previous discussion on paradigm shifts. Cognitive psychology is the future of psychology. It is perfectly scientific, and this is why there is a world-renowned department dedicated to it at MIT.