From Ted Lovesey
As an engineer who values psychologies’ tools, I was delighted to read Dorothy Rowes discussing whether psychology is science (November, p 18). I recall one psychologist being asked to find out whether vibration was a problem in helicopters.
He designed a perfectly balanced experiment comparing several frequencies of very severe vibration with a control case with no vibration. He asked subjects to do a search task for a few minutes while exposed, or not, to the various helicopter vibration frequencies. He proclaimed that there was no statistically significant difference between the test results and concluded that vibration in helicopters was not a problem.
He did not bother to use the tools developed in psychology to ask his highly motivated subjects to assess the severity of the vibrations. Nor did he find out how his tasks and durations compared with real life conditions. Had he done so, he would have found quite different answers. Instead he relied upon statistical processing to produce numbers, which it seems, is what psychologists seem to need to justify their work. He threw the baby out with the bath water!
We engineers need to use the very valuable subjective techniques developed by psychologists. Why don’t we all, including all psychologists, use them?
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Stoke Gabriel, Devon, UK
