In article <ls8lnvINNrtb@saltillo.cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu      (Russell Turpin) writes: >            ...  >*not* imply that all their treatments are ineffective.  It *does* >imply that those who rely on faulty methodology and reasoning are >incapable of discovering *which* treatments are effective and >which are not.)  To start with, no methodology or form of reasoning is infallible.  So there's a question of how much certainty we are willing to pay for in a given context.  Insistence on too much rigor bogs science down completely and makes progress impossible.  (Expenditure of sufficiently large sums of money and amounts of time can sometimes overcome this.)  On the other hand, with too little rigor much is lost by basing work on results which eventually turn out to be false.  There is a morass of studies contradicting other studies and outsiders start saying  "You people call THIS science?"   (My opinion, for what it's worth, is that one sees both these phenomena happening simultaneously in some parts of psychology.)    Some subjective judgement is required to decide on the level of rigor appropriate for a particular investigation.  I don't believe it is  ever possible to banish subjective judgement from science.     My second point, though, is that highly capable people can often make extremely reliable judgements about scientific validity even when using methodology considered inadequate by the usual standards.  I think this is true of many scientists and I think it is true of many who approach their discipline in a way that is not generally recognized as scientific.  Within mathematics, I think there are several examples, especially before the twentieth century.  One conspicuous case is that of Riemann, who is famous for many theorems he stated but did not prove.  (Later  mathematicians did prove them, of course.)    I think that for a good scientist, empirical investigation is often not so much a matter of determining what is true and what's not  as it is a  matter of convincing other people.  (People have proposed lots of  incompatible definitions of science here, but I think the ability to  objectively convince others of the validity of one's results is an essential element.  Not that one can necessarily do that at every step  of the scientific process, but I think that if one is not moving toward  that goal then one is not doing science.)  When a person other than a scientist is quite good at what he does and seems to be very successful at it, I think that his judgements are also worthy of respect and that his assertions are well worth further investigation.    In article <C53By5.HD@news.Hawaii.Edu> I wrote:  > Namely, is there really justification for the belief that > science is a superior path to truth than non-scientific approaches?    Admittedly, my question was not at all well posed.  A considerable amount of effort in a "serious scholarly investigation" such as I suggested would be required simply to formulate an appropriately  specific question to try and answer.    The "science" I was thinking of in my question is the actual science  currently practiced now in the last decade of the twentieth century.   I certainly wasn't thinking of some idealized science or the mere use  of "reason and observation."  One thing I had in mind in my suggestion was the question as to whether in many cases the subjective judgements of skilled and experienced practitioners might be more reliable than statistical studies.    Since Russell Turpin seems to be much more familiar than I am with the study of scientific methodology, perhaps he can tell us if there  is any existing research related to this question.    -- In the arguments between behaviorists and cognitivists, psychology seems  less like a science than a collection of competing religious sects.