Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?

Is Psychometrics Pathological Science?

Joel Mitchell

Pathology of science occurs when the normal processes of scientific investigation break down and a hypothesis is accepted as true within the mainstream of a disci- pline without a serious attempt being made to test it and without any recognition that this is happening. It is argued that this has happened in psychometrics: The hypothesis upon which it is premised, that psychological attributes are quanti- tative, is accepted within the mainstream, and not only do psychometricians fail to acknowledge this, but they hardly recognize the existence of this hypothesis at all. It is suggested that certain social interests, identifiable within the history of modern psychology, have produced this situation because of the ideological and economic secondary gains derived from presenting psychology as a quantitative science. The question of whether modern item response models are exempt from this critique is considered, and it is concluded that they have not yet faced up to the challenges of seriously testing the relevant hypothesis or even bothered to recognize its existence.

After World War II, the era of Big Science emerged. The social causes were the defense requirements of the Cold War and the increased expectations of Americans and Europeans regarding progress in education, technology, and medicine. The immediate postwar decades witnessed an unprecedented expansion in government investment in scientific research. Research grants became the main vehicle by which not only individual careers but also the aspirations of entire disciplines progressed. This affected disciplines on the margins of the established sciences, such as psychology, as much as the established sciences themselves, because marginal disciplines were forced to compete for smaller shares of the total amount available. This quickly led to a phenomenon called “the new rigorism” (Schorske, 1997, p. 309). Psychology did not actually become more rigorous, but it aped the methodological rigor of the established quantitative sciences as a way of signaling its scientific credentials to granting agencies (Solovey, 2004).