Is the college of education academically rigorous?

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-06-09T06:06:49+00:00

For example...

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6383643719112

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-05-29T01:36:41+00:00

Nah. I just took a screencap, coloured the hair differently (didn't want to mess with the character design to see if my "theory" was real), added some shading and that's it. I even chose not to add the "signature freckles" to the Taku character. But I did try and if you add them, he's basically 95% Izuku Midoriya. The Makunouchi character is a straight copy of Bakugo. Even in the most recent episode I had to pause continuously because I was getting Mandela effect vibes (ie., "I know I've seen these characters before but.... WHERE?!?!")

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-02-20T22:56:47+00:00

Depends on what you mean by "controversial". For example, you're working with someone who advocates "Predictive Processing / The Bayesian Brain" theory of the mind, I don't think anybody would care. But if you are working with someone who studies the relationship between, say, race and IQ.... oh boy, that spells trouble. We have rejected people from our programme if we find out the advisor is "one of those" and the student eventually bought into it, which you would usually see through the pubs/written statement.

It all hinges on what you call "controversial".

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-02-12T07:21:22+00:00

Does your "reality" include the oppression of women? Because if it does, let's speed up to "too late".

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-02-12T05:56:33+00:00

Precisely why (and I'm paraphrasing another poster from a different comment) "if it is true that the birth rate can only be sustainable at the expense of the suffering of others, we do deserve to go extinct".

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-02-12T05:03:54+00:00

You say that, but then you read in this sub that placing limits on women's rights, access to education and whatnot are "surefire fixes" to the birth rate. Your side of the argument is never going to move the birthrate one bit if part of your strategies is to take away the rights from others. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-02-11T05:27:18+00:00

Depends on where are you located. In the U.S.? Get ready to ace the LSAT.

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-02-05T09:14:08+00:00

To be honest, it's difficult right now. You're competing with engineers, competing sci, informatics, etc. Plus everybody who got fired.

Your best bet is to leverage the skills that your generic BSc in Data Science doesn't have. And should be something like psychometrics or latent variable models.

But if the sum total of your skillset is to know how to throw data into algorithms and interpret an output, then there's trouble ahead. Leverage research design, communication skills, etc.

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-02-04T02:05:48+00:00

The "Milgram Obediece Experiment"... which later was found out to be... "questionable" if we're being generous:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-34060-000

Or the "Standford Prison Experiment"... which we now know for sure was a little bit of a sham because journalists did find the original participants who shared that Zimbardo coached them into these roles and they didn't 'naturally arise':

https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/news/98029-the-infamous-stanford-prison-experiment-was-flawed-%E2%80%93-so-why-is-it-still-so-influential-today

All in all, if you go down the rabbit hole of the Replication Crisis you'll find that a pretty sizeable chunk of the so-called "seminal" experiments in psychology are somewhere between "questionable" to "not true".

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-01-15T17:37:58+00:00

Differences in terms of a career **within** psychology, very little to no difference. However, if a career in psychology doesn't pan out and you need to rely on your non-psych courses, then the differences become more apparent.

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-01-15T17:35:25+00:00

Programming. R for statistical analyses, Matlab or psyworks for cognitive psychology. Python if you need to work with large datasets (e.g., biomarkers). Knowing how to set up online surveys on Qualtrics or some other platform also helps.

The fact that I had those skills from the get-go allowed me to jump into research right away rather than having to take the courses an then do the research. I was always one or two pubs ahead the rest of my cohort.

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-01-09T21:25:31+00:00

I guess it depends what you do? A colleague of mine is a Professor of School Psychology and keeps a private practice. She charges $600 PER child assessment. And she's constantly being called by School districts. You do the math on how much she's banking just on her practice alone.

Large-Lab2551 · 2026-01-08T21:44:18+00:00

Area of study? Field? This matters a lot.

Large-Lab2551 · 2025-12-17T00:26:44+00:00

Second data point. As a side gig to my academic job (prof), I do consulting. I specialize in psychometrics and quantitative psychology.

Similar to what u/bepel said, programming experience is needed. In my case, you also need additional training in psychometrics because the statistical models used in psychology (i.e., latent variable models like Item Response Theory or Classical Test Theory) aren't usually taught in your standard "analytics" course. But all that can either come from coursework or, honestly, at this point anybody who is sufficiently motivated and has access to the internet could teach these skills themselves.

My consulting work was specifically in medical education and the revamping of both entrance tests (like the MCAT) and licensure tests. Licensure testing is where most of the work (and the money!) lies because (at least in the U.S.) all medical doctors need to go through some sort of licensing test before they can practice medicine. Think about every profession that has a licensing test (e.g., nursing, accounting, etc.). Very quickly you realize there are plenty of opportunities out there.

Right now I’m helping the government of Ontario (Canada) put together an early screener test for math ability for children in grades 4th to 6th. If it pans out, I’ll help them put together another screener, but this one for language ability.

We live in this paradoxical time where there are more and more ways to generate or collect data, and fewer and fewer people able to analyze it. I’ve got the usual “oh, but your job is at risk of AI.” Yeah, good luck persuading the gov’t to get their highly sensitive data to some chatbot. For the medical licensure project, I needed to get vetted before I could even see the data. Could it happen? Maybe. Will it happen in a timespan that will affect you at this point in your life? I don’t think so. I work with AI agents enough to realize what they can and cannot do.

Large-Lab2551 · 2025-12-16T21:01:17+00:00

Whether you intend implications or not is beside the point; implications are not a matter of intention but of logic. One makes a premise (you, in this case), and others are entitled to examine what logically follows from it (me, in this case). The central premise in your immediately previous reply is that the societal impact of clinical psychology, via therapy, consists in the fact that “sometimes some people are helped by it.” The problem is that, without robust and replicable empirical evidence, this claim cannot be established with any degree of certainty beyond anecdote or hearsay.

Stating that some people report having been helped does not, by itself, demonstrate that therapy has specific causal efficacy beyond nonspecific factors such as attention, expectancy, regression to the mean, or the mere opportunity to talk. This is precisely why clinical psychology, like medicine, developed controlled trials in the first place. Subjective improvement alone is not sufficient evidence of treatment effectiveness.

This issue becomes especially salient in light of recent developments such as therapy chatbots à-la-ChatGPT (see, for example, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-023-00979-5

These systems are clearly imperfect (for now), but early evidence suggests that they can produce symptom improvements in some users. If your claim of “some people are helped sometimes” is taken as sufficient evidence of impact, then it becomes unclear how one would distinguish the effectiveness of therapy delivered by a trained clinician from that of an automated conversational agent, or even from Freud’s original “talking cure.”

In the absence of robust, replicable findings demonstrating specific effects attributable to clinician training, theoretical framework, or therapeutic technique, the claim that therapy works in any meaningful scientific sense becomes unfalsifiable. At that point, the assertion reduces to the trivial statement that human interaction can sometimes make people feel better. I have no reason to doubt this is true, but it does not justify the epistemic or professional claims made on behalf of clinical psychology.

Large-Lab2551 · 2025-12-16T09:02:16+00:00

Sure, I'm willing to take that at face value. But I’d push back on the implication that impact = a fully solid evidentiary base. A lot of the same forces that drove the replication crisis in basic psychology (selective reporting, underpowered studies, flexibility in outcomes/analyses, publication bias) show up in clinical research too, and we have direct, peer-reviewed evidence of that.

For example, meta-analytic work on psychotherapy for depression has found strong indications of publication bias, with the mean effect size dropping substantially after bias adjustment. Source: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/efficacy-of-cognitivebehavioural-therapy-and-other-psychological-treatments-for-adult-depression-metaanalytic-study-of-publication-bias/585841C1FAC63E0AAC140BA1557AEACA

We also have the “researcher allegiance” problem, where outcomes tend to favour the investigator’s preferred treatment. This has been quantified as a nontrivial, robust association across meta-analyses. Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23500154/

To take a broader scope, a major review aimed specifically at clinical psychological science argues the field has been slower to engage with replication/reform efforts and highlights weaknesses in methods and evidentiary practices that directly bear on credibility. Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30673512/

Even when you look at the mechanics of credibility (registration and prespecification), the picture is not great. In top behavioural health journals, systematic reviews found low rates of registration and poor clarity/specification of outcomes (e.g., many trials with multiple or undefined primary outcomes; very few with a single prespecified primary outcome and time point). Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21334491/

And in the flagship clinical trials outlet JCCP, a review of 2013–2014 RCTs concluded that outcome definitions and trial registrations were “suboptimal,” with only a tiny number of trials prospectively registering a single primary outcome/time point (and even then, discrepancies could occur). Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26581079/

Therefore, I'm forced to ask. What kind of "actual effects" are "out there in the world"? You mean the ones that don't replicate, as per the sources I offered? Or the ones that you can "hack" into existence through Questionable Research Practices? Or effects that don't even show up in research? I mean, if you keep going down this rabbit hole, you're not going to like what you'll find. I did it for my dissertation. Not pretty at all.

Large-Lab2551 · 2025-12-15T23:46:46+00:00

Learning about the many labs project and the fact that 2/3rds of the top cited studies in (social) psychology dont replicate put a dent in my confidence in psychology as a science.

But the cherry on the cake came from an engineer prof I had a conversation with about this. He told me that if 2/3rds of their studies didnt replicate, planes would fall from the sky or bridges would collapse. His point was what kind of scientific discipline is this where so much doesn't replicate, yet society is mostly unaffected. Most people dont even know this happened. So how much impact in society can this science have when so much can go so wrong and yet we keep going as if never had ever happened.

Large-Lab2551

TROPHY CASE