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Preface | |
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Psychology Is Alive and Well (and Doing Fine Among the Sciences) | |
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The Freud Problem | |
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The Diversity of Modern Psychology | |
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Implications of Diversity | |
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Unity in Science | |
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What, Then, Is Science? | |
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Systematic Empiricism | |
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Publicly Verifiable Knowledge: Replication and Peer Review | |
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Empirically Solvable Problems: Scientists' Search for Testable Theories | |
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Psychology and Folk Wisdom: The Problem with "Common Sense" | |
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Psychology as a Young Science | |
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Summary | |
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Falsifiability: How to Foil Little Green Men in the Head | |
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Theories and the Falsifiability Criterion | |
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The Theory of Knocking Rhythms | |
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Freud and Falsifiability | |
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The Little Green Men | |
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Not All Confirmations Are Equal | |
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Falsifiability and Folk Wisdom | |
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The Freedom to Admit a Mistake | |
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Thoughts Are Cheap | |
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Errors in Science: Getting Closer to the Truth | |
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Summary | |
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Operationism and Essentialism: "But, Doctor, What Does It Really Mean?" | |
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Why Scientists Are Not Essentialists | |
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Essentialists Like to Argue About the Meaning of Words | |
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Operationists Link Concepts to Observable Events | |
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Reliability and Validity | |
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Direct and Indirect Operational Definitions | |
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Scientific Concepts Evolve | |
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Operational Definitions in Psychology | |
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Operationism as a Humanizing Force | |
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Essentialist Questions and the Misunderstanding of Psychology | |
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Summary | |
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Testimonials and Case Study Evidence: Placebo Effects and the Amazing Randi | |
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The Place of the Case Study | |
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Why Testimonials Are Worthless: Placebo Effects | |
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The "Vividness" Problem | |
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The Overwhelming Impact of the Single Case | |
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The Amazing Randi: Fighting Fire with Fire | |
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Testimonials Open the Door to Pseudoscience | |
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Summary | |
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Correlation and Causation: Birth Control by the Toaster Method | |
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The Third-Variable Problem: Goldberger and Pellagra | |
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Why Goldberger's Evidence Was Better | |
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The Directionality Problem | |
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Selection Bias | |
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Summary | |
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Getting Things Under Control: The Case of Clever Hans | |
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Snow and Cholera | |
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Comparison, Control, and Manipulation | |
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Random Assignment in Conjunction with Manipulation Defines the True Experiment | |
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The Importance of Control Groups | |
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The Case of Clever Hans, the Wonder Horse | |
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Clever Hans in the 1990s | |
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Prying Variables Apart: Special Conditions | |
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Intuitive Physics | |
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Intuitive Psychology | |
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Summary | |
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"But It's Not Real Life!": The "Artificiality" Criticism and Psychology | |
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Why Natural Isn't Always Necessary | |
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The "Random Sample" Confusion | |
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The Random Assignment Versus Random Sample Distinction | |
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Theory-Driven Research Versus Direct Applications | |
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Applications of Psychological Theory | |
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The "College Sophomore" Problem | |
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The Real-Life and College Sophomore Problems in Perspective | |
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Summary | |
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Avoiding the Einstein Syndrome: The Importance of Converging Evidence | |
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The Connectivity Principle | |
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A Consumer's Rule: Beware of Violations of Connectivity | |
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The "Great-Leap" Model Versus the Gradual-Synthesis Model | |
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Converging Evidence: Progress Despite Flaws | |
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Converging Evidence in Psychology | |
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Scientific Consensus | |
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Methods and the Convergence Principle | |
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The Progression to More Powerful Methods | |
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A Counsel Against Despair | |
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Summary | |
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The Misguided Search for the "Magic Bullet": The Issue of Multiple Causation | |
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The Concept of Interaction | |
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The Temptation of the Single-Cause Explanation | |
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Summary | |
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The Achilles' Heel of Human Cognition: Probabilistic Reasoning | |
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"Person-Who" Statistics | |
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Probabilistic Reasoning and the Misunderstanding of Psychology | |
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Psychological Research on Probabilistic Reasoning | |
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Insufficient Use of Probabilistic Information | |
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Failure to Use Sample-Size Information | |
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The Gambler's Fallacy | |
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A Further Word About Statistics and Probability | |
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Summary | |
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The Role of Chance in Psychology | |
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The Tendency to Try to Explain Chance Events | |
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Explaining Chance: Illusory Correlation and the Illusion of Control | |
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Chance and Psychology | |
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Coincidence | |
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Personal Coincidences | |
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Accepting Error in Order to Reduce Error: Clinical Versus Actuarial Prediction | |
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Summary | |
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The Rodney Dangerfield of the Sciences | |
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Psychology's Image Problem | |
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Psychology and Parapsychology | |
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The Self-Help Literature | |
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Recipe Knowledge | |
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Psychology and Other Disciplines | |
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Our Own Worst Enemies | |
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Isn't Everyone a Psychologist? Implicit Theories of Behavior | |
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The Source of Resistance to Scientific Psychology | |
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The Final Word | |
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References | |
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Credits | |
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Name Index | |
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Subject Index | |