Science and Psychiatry in the 21st Century

Excerpt

Science, as defined in the dictionary, is a branch of knowledge involving systematized observation and experiment (Thompson, 1996). The two main components of science are measurement and testing. To obtain systematized observations, scientists need to measure the objects, attributes, or whatever phenomena they are trying to investigate. Psychiatrists are interested in measuring anxiety, depression, psychosis and other human attributes. Physicists are interested in measuring the diameter of earth, distances between planets, the speed of light and waves and many others. Eventually, the measured objects or attributes are given numbers. As Nunnally (1978) said “measurement consists of rules for assigning numbers to objects in such a way as to represent quantities of attributes.” Once scientists assign numbers to objects and attributes, experimenting and testing hypotheses follow. Scientists use mathematical equations, statistical models, clinical trials and other methods to prove or disprove different theories and generalize the results. …