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Scientific Status (scientific + status)
Selected AbstractsSOMATOTYPING, ANTIMODERNISM, AND THE PRODUCTION OF CRIMINOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE,CRIMINOLOGY, Issue 4 2007NICOLE RAFTER This study analyzes the work of William H. Sheldon, the psychologist, physician, and advocate of the study of body types. It investigates how he arrived at his much-repeated finding that a correlation exists between mesomorphy (a stocky, muscular body build) and delinquency and how his ideas were validated and perpetuated. It reviews what Sheldon actually said about the causes of crime; identifies his goals in searching for a relationship between body shape and criminality; explains how he found audiences for his biological theory at a time when sociological approaches dominated criminology; and attempts to understand the current criminological ambivalence about the scientific status of Sheldon's work, despite its discreditation decades ago. I argue that the tripartite structure of Sheldon's thought attracted three different audiences,methodologists, social scientists, and supporters,and that it encouraged the supporters to fund his research without reference to the critiques of the social scientists. I also argue that somatotyping was part of a broader antimodernist reaction within international scientific communities against the dislocations of twentieth-century life. To understand the origins, acceptance, and maintenance of criminological ideas, we need a historical perspective on figures of the past. Positivism may inform us about what is true and false, but we also need to know how truth and falsity have been constructed over time and how the ideas of earlier criminologists were shaped by their personal and social contexts. [source] Wittgenstein, Freud, Dreaming and Education: Psychoanalytic explanation as ,une façon de parler'1EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 5 2008James D. Marshall Abstract Freud saw the dream as occupying a very important position in his theoretical model. If there were to be problems with his theoretical account of the dream then this would impinge upon proposed therapy and, of course, education as the right balance between the instincts and the institution of culture. Wittgenstein, whilst stating that Freud was interesting and important, raised several issues in relation to psychology/psychoanalysis, and to Freud in particular. Why would Wittgenstein have seen Freud as having some important things to say, even though he was sharply critical of Freud's claims to be scientific? The major issues to be considered in this paper are, in Section 1, the scientific status of Freud's work,was it science or was it more like philosophy than science; the analysis of dreams; rationality, and dreams and madness. Section 2 considers Freud and education, including the indignity of Freud's notion of ,the talking cure.' Section 3 considers psychoanalytic explanations not as theory but as a manner of speaking: ,une façon de parler.' [source] An analysis of the demarcation problem in science and its application to therapeutic touch theoryINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING PRACTICE, Issue 6 2007David Newbold RN PhD This paper analyses the demarcation problem from the perspective of four philosophers: Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend. To Popper, pseudoscience uses induction to generate theories, and only performs experiments to seek to verify them. To Popper, falsifiability is what determines the scientific status of a theory. Taking a historical approach, Kuhn observed that scientists did not follow Popper's rule, and might ignore falsifying data, unless overwhelming. To Kuhn, puzzle-solving within a paradigm is science. Lakatos attempted to resolve this debate, by suggesting history shows that science occurs in research programmes, competing according to how progressive they are. The leading idea of a programme could evolve, driven by its heuristic to make predictions that can be supported by evidence. Feyerabend claimed that Lakatos was selective in his examples, and the whole history of science shows there is no universal rule of scientific method, and imposing one on the scientific community impedes progress. These positions are used in turn, to examine the scientific status of therapeutic touch theory. The paper concludes that imposing a single rule of method can impede progress, in the face of multiple epistemologies, and the choice of scientific approach should be a pragmatic one based on the aims of the programme. [source] On the Intersection Between AD/HD and DCD: The DAMP HypothesisCHILD AND ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 3 2003Edmund J. S. Sonuga-Barke The paper by Gillberg, ,ADHD and DAMP', provides an analysis of the scientific status of the concept of Deficits in Attention Motor Control and Perception (DAMP) in the light of the overlap between Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) and Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD), and the current uncertainty surrounding the significance of AD/HD , DCD co-morbidity. [source] Is Cognitive Case Formulation Science or Science Fiction?CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY: SCIENCE AND PRACTICE, Issue 1 2003Peter J. Bieling As with all systematic models of therapy, cognitive therapy distills a theory to the understanding of particular cases through the case formulation method. This article sets out criteria to evaluate whether cognitive case formulation follows the process of scientific inquiry, and it questions whether the formulation method meets these criteria. In terms of the evidence base for the cognitive theory that underpins cognitive case formulation, the research suggests that although the descriptive elements of cognitive theory are substantiated, the explanatory elements have received less support. In terms of the scientific status of the cognitive case formulation process, current evidence for the reliability of the cognitive case formulation method is modest, at best. There is a striking paucity of research examining the validity of cognitive case formulations or the impact of cognitive case formulation on therapy outcome. Implications for the clinical use of cognitive case formulation within a scientist-practitioner model are discussed, and potential programs of research to evaluate the case formulation method are described. [source] | ||||||||||