There is a recent news feature in The New Yorker, They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie?, stating that, “One of the confounding things about the social sciences is that observational evidence can produce only correlations. The discipline of judgment and decision-making had made crucial, enduring contributions—the foundation laid by Kahneman and Tversky, for example—but the broader credibility of the behavioral sciences had been compromised by a perpetual-motion machine of one-weird-trick gimmickry….soon, entire branches of supposedly reliable findings—on social priming (the idea that, say, just thinking about an old person makes you walk more slowly), power posing, and ego depletion—started to seem like castles in the air. (Cuddy, the H.B.S. professor, defended her work, later publishing a study that showed power posing had an effect on relevant “feelings.”) Some senior figures in the field were forced to consider the possibility that their contributions amounted to nothing.”
What is the difference between behavioral science or economics and psychiatry? They both label external cues. Psychiatry remains incomplete with the difficulty of mental disorders. Behavioral science and economics plunged into many things, resulting in several nugatory studies, with some to the point of fabrication.
If someone can fake a behavior, why is external observation still the standard in behavioral science? It is possible that several aspects of behavior may be difficult to conceal, but what should be the standard to back observations?
What is the mechanism of behavior in the brain, to show that this action is by this activity? Neurons are simply not the answer, so seeking the neural correlates of behavior is the wrong direction because where would the self be, or control, or choice, would it be the cell body, the sheaths or the node or the ‘wirings’? Behavioral economics found success due to the lack of understanding about the brain, but as mental health issues ballooned in the last few years and it had no answers, its core began to unravel, making it like a spa, not for the rocky way.
Similar in this regard to behavioral science is consciousness research, where the search for the neural correlates of consciousness is central. Consciousness is principally about subjective experience or what it is like to be, for a human. The study of consciousness recently had a theory labeled pseudoscience from some of their own, resulting in many taking sides and lobbing grenades.
Consciousness is only relevant, it appears, to researchers in consciousness. They say it is for everyone but someone in the world may be on a drug overdose now. That person, those around or loved ones do not care what cute speak those in consciousness use, can their work provide any help?
The same thing applies to people with serious mental illnesses—without solutions in psychiatry—but consciousness research languishes in the reputation of the most difficult scientific problem, when no one needs it because there is nothing, even little to show it is useful.
Consciousness research has theoretical competition, testing some against others. Why is this necessary? Why not compete against problems in mental illnesses then the closest to the objective wins. Why experiment theories based on tests with little relevance to mental health?
There are several reputable behavioral economists, who may have had great work, but works like system 1 and system 2, or experiencing self and remembering self, positional arms race, the strategic role of emotions, lack of self-control, nudges, simple heuristics that make us smart and many others, are not useful, at least to mental disorders, or to much else.
Behavioral economics and science are already discredited by mental illnesses. Any observation in the field should be used to answer for conditions of mind, if it may still be viewed the same afterwards.
Consciousness research has shades of philosophy that include physicalism, materialism, dualism, panpsychism and others with no usefulness to mental disorders and addictions. Consciousness science is likewise discredited.
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