Philosophy of the Social Sciences· 2026Q1
The Analytic Cart Before the Ontological Horse: A Response to Michell’s “The Mystery of Missing Psychometric Corpus ”
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- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
This response argues that psychology's reliance on null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is linked to the "missing corpus" of critiques on psychometricians' assumption that psychological attributes have quantitative structure.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Psychology's reliance on NHST is connected to a lack of critiques on the assumption of quantitative structure in psychological attributes.
- The distinction between "visible" (NHST) and "invisible" (measurement) critiques may obscure the role of NHST in driving measurement assumptions.
- Political theory, not scientific evidence, played a role in the widespread adoption of psychometric methods.
- The response challenges the a priori assumption that psychological attributes inherently sustain quantitative structure.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
This response to Michell’s article raises three main concerns. First, there is an important yet unexamined relationship between psychology’s reliance on inferential statistics (NHST) and the “missing corpus” of critiques of psychometricians’ a priori assumption that psychological attributes sustain quantitative structure. Second, framing the problem as one of “visible” (NHST) versus “invisible” (measurement) critiques may mask how commitment to NHST drove psychologists to assume measurement is taking place. Finally, Michell fails to account for the role political theory played in explaining the widespread adoption of psychometric methods, sans scientific evidence.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: General Psychology
General PsychologyPsychology