> You should really talk to some cognitive scientists for some depth and perspective on the issues of studying the mind.

Oh, really? Would that be those same cognitive scientists whose therapeutic methods has been shown to be indistinguishable from a placebo effect?:

Link: http://www.brown.uk.com/depression/parker.pdf (warning: PDF)

Title: "Treating depression with the evidence-based psychotherapies: a critique of the evidence"

Conclusion: No reliable evidence supporting CBT over any other method or no method.

> There are real things to consider about the study of the mind ...

First, from a scientific standpoint, the mind doesn't exist. Second, psychologists only describe, they don't try to explain. Third, theories require efforts to explain, and finally, science requires theories.

No mind, no empirical observations, no efforts to explain, no theory, no science.

Prove me wrong -- send me a picture of the mind, or its weight, or its morphology, or its location, or its distance from the brain. I will accept a photograph of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a substitute.

> ... and you're comparing p-values between particle physics and studies with human subjects?

Your objection seems to be that it's unrealistic to compare p-values between psychology and real science. Well, I agree -- that was the point of my example.

> Armchair theorizing about autism?

All theorizing about autism is armchair theorizing, because no one has offered an explanation, only differing descriptions -- the plague of psychology.

> The DSM is written by psychiatrists.

Nonsense. They're involved, as are clinical psychologists and others. In any case, a psychiatrist is a psychologist with an M.D. degree. You're comparing oranges and oranges.

> Calling all of psychology (which spans more sub-fields than one might imagine) a psuedoscience?

It is a pseudoscience until it offers testable, falsifiable theories that define the field itself, something that's not close to happening. BTW this is not only my claim, it is that of many critics of the field over decades.

Psychology, unlike legitimate scientific fields, has no theoretical core of testable claims that defines the field. This is a requirement for the status of a scientific field.

Physics has the standard model. Biology has evolution and genetics. Geology has physics and plate tectonics. Psychology has a number of poorly articulated, untestable anecdotes.

Medical researchers can and do control the activities of medical practitioners. The reason? A clear, tested theoretical core and solid scientific evidence.

Psychological researchers cannot control the activities of psychological practitioners. The reason? No theoretical core and no scientific evidence.

And until this changes, people like you need to stop claiming that psychology has a scientific basis -- it doesn't. The present state of clinical psychology puts the lie to that claim.

Richard Feynman made this general claim long before I or others did:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science (discussion)

http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html (article)

Quote: "I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land."

And, as proven by the Asperger's fiasco (the opportunistic introduction and hasty removal of Asperger's as a "disease" recognized by the DSM) among other things, nothing has changed.