I'm a moderator on this website, so I am the authority. It is my job to ensure that the rules are followed and that the scientific method is respected on SciForums. The Rule of Laplace (often called "Sagan's Law" by American TV viewers) reminds us that extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect. Most absolute statements are extraordinary, and to say that there is no science in a respected branch of health care is certainly as absolute as it is preposterous.
Excuse me, but you are the one who has been challenged. Please present the evidence to support your extraordinary assertion. Support the argument you have already made before moving it forward. This is how scholarship works.
I'm going to open a new thread to explain in detail why there's no science in psychiatry and why people are so misled by this field.
However, I'd like to point out a few things that you don't seem to understand:
- when someone claims that something exists(like science in psychiatry), the burden of proof lies with that person/group, not with those who claim that it doesn't exist
- there's no such thing as "extraordinary evidence" just as there's no "weak evidence" or "strong evidence" - terms used by the pseudoscience crowd and incompetent "researchers" when they can't prove something because of uncertainty (which in real science means "we don't know")
- "Sagan's law" is just popular nonsense
- if you do care about the scientific method, then you either: 1. have your own (probably "soft") definition (which has really nothing to do with real, rigorous science) or 2. never bothered to check whether the scientific method is used in psychiatry (like opening the DSM and checking a few random "illnesses/disorders" to see what's the scientific, objectively verifiable basis behind them)
- the fact that many others regard a certain field as being scientific, does not really make that field scientific (logical fallacy, appeal to popularity)
- the fact that others, whom you regard as "authorities" in certain fields, consider those fields scientific, does not make those fields scientific (logical fallacy, appeal to authority)
- the fact that certain "tools" (like statistics for example) typically used in science, are used in a certain field, does not make that field scientific (logical fallacy, non-sequitur - otherwise we could conclude that astrology is scientific, because astrologers use statistics and make correlations which they interpret as causation - which is by the way a very popular fallacy used by the pseudoscience crowd and unfortunately also by many apparently "legitimate" researchers who are incompetent and/or have their own "agenda" and/or have no funds for proper research, etc.)
- relative, subjective, non-quantifiable, non-verifiable concepts/data/etc - have absolutely no place in science
- there's no such thing as "we strive to use the scientific method" - no, the scientific method is either used or not(experimentation is indispensable, because that's what the scientific method entails), and a hypothesis is either confirmed or not... there are no middle ways...
- in science, scientists are not afraid to say "We don't know" and don't seek to convince the public/ a certain party, that a hypothesis is "probably"/"almost certainly"/etc. true/false using shady tactics (logical fallacies, bad data/sampling, etc)