On Method: Toward a Reconstruction of Psychological Investigation

I don't quite see that we, as psychologists, are producing much knowledge....Quite the contrary. I believe that there is a crisis in research in psychology. Though enormous resources are being expended for psychological research, the yield of new and significant information concerning the human psyche is relatively small in comparison. We nay appreciate why this is the case by considering the garden variety of experiment 'run' by students aspiring to win higher degrees - not to mention experiments of many of their professors. It characteristically involves converting observational data to numbers, calculating statistics on these numbers, and applying tests of significance to these numbers. The fact is that this kind of experimentation, with the abrogations that generally go along with it - in the very name of science - cannot yield much information and certainly little that is particularily novel. As many can attest, 'running' an experiment in this manner is hardly an exercise conducive to overcoming mental inertia and sluggishness, as science should do. Most experimentation in the field of psychology falls short of being able to be considered really empirical. Consider the ideal of the 'well-designed experiment.' The usual meaning of well-designed is that the outcomes of the experiment have been completely anticipated, and that one will not allow the experience of conducting the experiment to lead one to consider alternatives outside of the ones already thought of beforehand. Good research into the unknown cannot be well designed in the usaual sense of the term. Science should not presuppose what it is yet to discover. If psychology were less scientistic it could become more scientific. --- from books dustjacket