> GPs will tell you that this is wha they say to most patients.

Yes, and when that happens, which it certainly does, it's not science. Are you sure an example from medicine that follows the same pattern as psychology, somehow validates the practice as science for both? With all respect, that's not the most powerful argument.

A scientific example from medicine would be -- to choose from hundreds of examples -- Ebola, in which we know exactly what causes it, we can view the causative agent in a microscope, and we know how to treat the cause, not the symptoms. It's the same with hundreds of other conditions. No such conditions or treatments exist in psychology -- the DSM is a list of symptoms with no causes.

> Given the evidence for CBT is so strong and the evidence for counseling is so weak it's telling that you recommend "chat's with your aunt" as being an effective treatment - totally misreading the literature.

You are mistaken. In fact, a careful reading of the literature leads one to exactly that conclusion (i.e. all therapies are equally effective, therefore there is no basis for preferring CBT over IPT, or a psychotherapist over a sympathetic relative). This is a typical crititism of the literature supporting CBT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy#Cr...

Quote: "... the methodological processes used to select the studies in the previously mentioned meta-analysis and the worth of its findings have been called into question.[113][114][115]"

That isn't surprising, when one considers how CBT is evaluated -- with no control groups or other controls in place against systematic bias. While reading the psychology literature one often hears the expression "no-treatment control" to describe an effort to create a show of scientific respectability by telling one group that they won't be treated, then calling that the control group -- only to add a patina of scientific respectability to a study that has no meaningful controls.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20887574

Quote: "While there is support for the efficacy of CBT over no treatment control conditions, there is little evidence that CBT is more efficacious than other psychotherapies. [...] Rather than declaring the 'dodo bird verdict' that CBT and all other psychotherapies are equally efficacious, it would be more beneficial to develop more potent forms of CBT by identifying variables that mediate treatment outcomes."

A noble goal for the future, but one that cannot erase the fact that CBT has a questionable evidentiary basis at present.

>> therapy is indistinguishable from the placebo

> This is nonsense. Perhaps you're confused?

The original statement was "... therapy is indistinguishable from the placebo effect." I recommend that you read the literature in your own field:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_psychotherapy

Quote: "Studies, such as the one conducted by Paley et al. (2008), have found little difference in the efficacy of CBT and IPT. A meta-analysis by Robinson et al. (1990) found that CBT was superior to a no-treatment control group; however, when compared to a placebo control group, there was no significant difference."

I chose the above examples from articles, each of which overall makes a case in favor of CBT, to show that the case for CBT exists without adequate controls against the placebo effect.

When confronted by this evidence against the scientific standing of the corpus of psychology research, its defenders often switch the subject of argument, saying that the reason there are no controls is because that would be unethical or impractical. But that's a different topic, one that cannot be used to rationalize the imagined scientific standing of psychological research.

In fact, reading on, I see you make precisely this argument:

> It should be obvious why you don't see placebo controlled studies for CBT - it is unethical to provide patients no therapy and so it's hard to get studies approved and it's hard to creat a sham talking therapy that would blind the patient and therapist.

That's true, that would be very difficult. But the above isn't a counterargument against the finding that psychology isn't a scientific activity -- instead it attempts to explain and rationalize that fact.

>> and existing medications have a terrible reputation

> Medication is not recommended as front line treatment anymore.

You haven't been talking to psychiatrists lately. To psychiatry, medications are the centerpiece of what they call "biological psychiatry." If medications were to suddenly be withdrawn from the mental health toolkit, modern psychiatry would collapse.

An example at random:

http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/

The above-linked journal largely describes various drug-based interventions, and is a representative summary of modern psychiatric practice.

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I have had this precise conversation hundreds of times over the past ten years. Someone defends one or more aspects of psychological research or practice, certain claims are made, then, when the claims are compared to the literature, the claims turn out to be flatly contradicted by the literature.

This is not argue that psychological literature comes to a single, well-supported conclusion, as is true in science. The psychological literature is more like an open-air buffet where, by wandering among the tables, you can find whatever suits your fancy.

When scientists at the LHC announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, the evidence was extraordinary good, with a statistical reliability exceeding five sigma (http://understandinguncertainty.org/explaining-5-sigma-higgs...). When scientists review this discovery, which had been predicted (i.e. explained) decades before on purely theoretical grounds, they are satisfied that the announcement corresponds to a trustworthy scientific research outcome. It can always be falsified by better science, or it can be explained by a better scientific theory, but it is certainly science -- it describes a process that reliably moves from theory to supporting evidence, from prediction to confirmation using empirical evidence.

In psychology, there are no theories to which research outcomes can be compared. This means studies tend to compare one observation to another, one symptomatic treatment to another. Eventually neuroscience will evolve to the point where it will replace psychology as the preferred basis for drawing conclusions about human behavior, but neuroscience is not remotely prepared for that role right now.