>Then write the next Farmville or build the next Facebook. If there's really that much low-hanging fruit, go out and pluck it. Put up or shut up. //
Your reasoning here is as fallacious as the idea that unrepeatable experiments are good science.
Your psychological hypotheses on addictive mechanisms can be entirely false and yet your game can still be addictive. Maybe the Skinner Box-like environment you create has a particular applicable demographic outside which it is largely impotent; but failure to repeat the experiment isn't seen as contradictory to the hypothesis and so you fail to address different markets with the specific sort of addictive elements that suit them best. You'd be leaving a heap of money on the table [for shame /s].
The ancient Greek idea that gravity worked by the attraction of Earth-kind substances to the Earth itself was falsified and yet things still fell down.
Would you say that a single superstitious action (finger crossing, say) coinciding with the desired outcome proves that finger crossing works? Do you think that those who ascribe to such a progression of logic as demonstrating sound scientific thinking, are being scientists?
IMO observations and experiments that can't be repeated are of the utmost importance in furthering knowledge. Truthfully reported anecdotes are valid data. But unrepeatable events have limited scientific value in and of themselves, they can not show statistical significance nor demonstrate that a hypothesis should be held to be true as an objectively valid scientific theory.
You're conflating a number of ideas, but the overall trend in your post is towards a debunked theory of science called positivism. You should research that.
Is your contention that [social] psychology need not rely on an empirical approach. How then are you to claim it's "scientific". Perhaps the best question to ask here is what do you consider, succinctly, to be the basis of the scientific method?
I did indicate that I'm happy to accept other methodologies as beneficial and am certainly not wedded to positivistic approaches in all fields of human understanding. Are you perhaps pushing the meaning of "repeatable" in the current context beyond the bounds of "supporting the same breadth of conclusion with equal confidence".
It is however not scientific to rely on unrepeatable experimental results. If an experiment is unrepeatable then the conclusions are proved false. Note that the question at hand is not whether the initial experiment is valid or useful. Science after all is axiomatic and the world, generally, non-deterministic so far as one can tell [though I know there are many dissenters on this point].
Well "pbhjpbhj," like I said, you're confusing logical positivism with science. Positivism, the idea that we can only believe propositions which are proved correct, lost favor in the late 1800's. Modern science, including social psychology, is in the vein of scientific theory called operationism. Like I said before, you should research this, because you don't know what you're talking about.
We're not talking about multiple metrics, the exact same metric is being used in empirically identical circumstances and the results are conflicting. The only way to square that position is to assume the conclusion is wrong or the data is wrong. Essentially the epistemological underpin isn't important; operationalising a system no more allows for unrepeatability in empirical data than does any other consistent scientific method - after-all if unrepeatability were allowed then the logical basis would be self contradictory.
Rather than arguing from abstract implications about my assumed knowledge why don't you address the question at hand?
Your reasoning here is as fallacious as the idea that unrepeatable experiments are good science.
Your psychological hypotheses on addictive mechanisms can be entirely false and yet your game can still be addictive. Maybe the Skinner Box-like environment you create has a particular applicable demographic outside which it is largely impotent; but failure to repeat the experiment isn't seen as contradictory to the hypothesis and so you fail to address different markets with the specific sort of addictive elements that suit them best. You'd be leaving a heap of money on the table [for shame /s].
The ancient Greek idea that gravity worked by the attraction of Earth-kind substances to the Earth itself was falsified and yet things still fell down.
Would you say that a single superstitious action (finger crossing, say) coinciding with the desired outcome proves that finger crossing works? Do you think that those who ascribe to such a progression of logic as demonstrating sound scientific thinking, are being scientists?
IMO observations and experiments that can't be repeated are of the utmost importance in furthering knowledge. Truthfully reported anecdotes are valid data. But unrepeatable events have limited scientific value in and of themselves, they can not show statistical significance nor demonstrate that a hypothesis should be held to be true as an objectively valid scientific theory.