Guest Speaker: James T. Lamiell - Statisticism in Psychological Research

The psychology department warmly welcomes James T. Lamiell to speak about 'statisticism' in psychological research. In some recent works, James has used the neologism 'statisticism' to characterize mainstream psychology’s canonical commitment to statistical methods of inquiry as the properly scientific means of discovering the lawfulness of human psychological 'doings' (i.e., sensations, perceptions, judgments, cognitions, emotions, behaviors). In this presentation, he will sketch (a) statisticism's historical ascendance, (b) mainstream psychology's astonishing incorrigibility in the face of repeated critiques of statisticism's tenets, and (c) the prospects for a scientific psychology finally rid of statisticism's pretensions.

James T. Lamiell is Professor of Psychology at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He has been a member of the Georgetown Psychology Department faculty since 1982, and served as the Chair of that Department from 2009 to 2015. He has also spent three academic terms in Germany as Fulbright scholar, respectively at the University of Heidelberg (1990), the University of Leipzig (1998), and the University of Hamburg (2004). In Hamburg, Lamiell also held the title of Ernst Cassirer Guest Professor in the Institute for Philosophy. His scholarly interests are in the history and philosophy of psychology, and he has for years been extensively engaged with the works of the German philosopher and psychologist William Stern (1871-1938).