According to Lilienfeld (2011), there are six principles of scientific thought that must be applied when utilizing scientific thinking. It is commonly believed that scientific thinking need only be applied to scientific concepts; however, this is not the case. These six scientific principles can be applied to any type of claim, regardless of subject matter; these principles are methods for analyzing claims in any realm of study. The six principles of scientific thinking, according to Lilienfeld (2011), are as follows: first, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; next, that a claim must be falsifiable if it is to be meaningful; third, that the simplest explanation is often the best one; fourth, that a study’s findings must be replicable to be valid; fifth, that rival hypotheses must be ruled out; and finally, that correlation is not causation, and should not be confused as such (Lilienfeld, 2011).
In the study of psychology and the examination of behavior, it is important to use each of these principles to properly study and understand human interactions and behavior. Falsifiability, for instance, is very important in psychology; making a hypothesis regarding the ways in which the brain works can be difficult, and proving that the brain works in the way that has been predicted changes the collective human understanding of consciousness. However, if a researcher makes a claim that cannot be falsified-- the idea that the soul is contained within the brain, for instance--then that claim has no business in a scientific line of inquiry. Similarly, if an experiment cannot be repeated and the results cannot be replicated, the study is all but useless. If, for instance, Pavlov was the only one who could make the dog salivate at the sound of a bell, then the collective human understanding on learning and behavior would be very different today.
In the article “Breaking: Courts discreetly confirm MMR vaccine causes autism,” NaturalNews writes, “These two cases, combined with numerous published studies out of the U.S., South America, and Europe, prove that the MMR vaccine is not the harmless vaccine that the conventional medical industry claims it is. In fact, everything that Dr. Wakefield found back in the late 1990s concerning the MMR vaccine are proving to be undeniably true” (NaturalNews, 2014). NaturalNews is clearly not an unbiased, scientifically peer-reviewed site; this is partially the reason it was chosen for a discussion on scientific principles of thought. The assumptions in this article are rife with fallacies, but perhaps the most apparent one in this particular article is the issue of correlation and causation. Many individuals who are anti-vaccine point to the risk of autism as one of the reasons to avoid vaccination; however, the incidence of autism around the time of the vaccine is no more than a coincidence based on when autism symptoms generally show up in children and when children are meant to get the MMR vaccine.
There is a correlation between the age at which children are often diagnosed as autistic and the age at which they receive their MMR vaccine; however, this does not mean that there is a causative effect in the vaccine that causes autism. All types of scientific studies have demonstrated that autism is not caused by vaccines; this is a correlation/causation fallacy.
Perhaps the most outrageous claim in the articles under discussion here is in the title of the second article from NaturalNews: “Treating hidden causes of disease results in miraculous healing” (NaturalNews, 2014). This is a perfect example of a claim that is extraordinary, and requires extraordinary proof to be considered true. However, there is nothing in the article that suggests that any kind of scientific proof has been provided; indeed, the article writes more about holistic medicine, which has been largely debunked by the medical profession as a whole. This claim is extraordinary due to the use of the world “miracle;” anything that can be considered a miracle is generally beyond any kind of scientific explanation, and does not belong in an article about scientific issues, medical cures, or disease.
The final article, from Science Daily, writes: “In the past decade, newly identified strains of enterovirus have been linked to polio-like outbreaks among children in Asia and Australia. These five new cases highlight the possibility of an emerging infectious polio-like syndrome in California” (American Academy of Neurology, 2014). This is a good example of the principle of ruling out rival hypotheses, as the children in this particular study had all been vaccinated with polio, leading the researchers to believe that the virus they were observing was not polio, but a virus similar to polio. The scientists then made their discovery widely available to the scientific community, inviting other scientists to give input and thoughts on the individual cases that they studied. This type of science can be replicated, and the claims contained within the article can be studied by other researchers; that is what makes this type of inquiry valid, while the NaturalNews articles made claims that could not be validated using scientific principles of thought and inquiry.
References
American Academy of Neurology (AAN). (2014, February 23). Mysterious polio-like illness found in five California children. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 24, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140223215100.htm
Lilienfeld, S. O. (2011). Psychology. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.
NaturalNews. (2014). Breaking: courts discreetly confirm MMR vaccine causes autism. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.naturalnews.com/041897_mmr_vaccines_autism_court_ruling.html# [Accessed: 25 Feb 2014].
NaturalNews. (2014). Treating hidden causes of disease results in miraculous healing. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.naturalnews.com/044040_disease_hidden_causes_holistic_medicine.html [Accessed: 25 Feb 2014].
