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Is Behaviorism Becoming a Pseudo-Science?: Power Versus Scientific Rationality in the Eclipse of Token Economies by Biological Psychiatry in the Treatment of Schizophrenia

Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies

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Title Is Behaviorism Becoming a Pseudo-Science?: Power Versus Scientific Rationality in the Eclipse of Token Economies by Biological Psychiatry in the Treatment of Schizophrenia
 
Creator Wakefield, Jerome C.
 
Description Wyatt and Wong argue that biological psychiatry's power, not its scientific merits, explain token economies' eclipse by biological treatments of schizophrenia. However, Wyatt and Wong's critiques of biological psychiatry, while partly true, ignore offsetting strengths and achievements as well as plausibility arguments that schizophrenia is partly biological; behavioral theory offers no cogent alternative account of etiology. Moreover, token-economy research fails to establish generalizability of changes to post-ward environments. Even Paul and Lentz's (1977) definitive research on token-economy treatment of schizophrenia failed to show generalization of changes to community life, and in fact, due to an inadvertent "natural experiment," reveals the instability of behavioral changes even after years of treatment. To preserve their belief system, behaviorists seem in danger of turning behaviorism into a pseudoscience defended by ad hoc hypotheses.
 
Publisher University of Illinois at Chicago Library
 
Date 2006-07-25
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
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Format application/pdf
 
Identifier https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/bsi/article/view/363
10.5210/bsi.v15i2.363
 
Source Behavior and Social Issues; Volume 15, Number 2 (Fall/Winter 2006); 202-221
1064-9506
 
Language eng
 
Relation https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/bsi/article/view/363/315