there's a grave difference between psychology and sociology. For this post, I'm going to assume you meant what you typed and know the difference between the two, although the alternative is more likely.
you are absolutely correct that psychology cannot ever offer corporeal results ("the capture of the invisible", Moravia 1983). Psychology can easily offer empirical evidence though. (certain) methods of testing give statistical probabilities and reinforce or deny a theory. I don't use the term "theory" lightly here - psychological research, when done properly, is as stringent as physics or maths. In fact, maybe even moreso, as we do not deal with corporeal results and thus (dis)proving something on a chalk board is very hard for us (I might be punching over my weight here, I have little knowledge of applied physics, plus I'm thinking more of mechanical physics than quantum physics..).
furthermore, of course psychologists understand and use the null hypothesis. disregarding or using a null hypothesis as grounds for research is the dumbest idea I've ever heard! we use the same formal defintion of theory as the physicists and chemists, just fyi.
the formal definitions of psychology are:
- applied science
- theoretical / formal science
- and has roots in the humanities.
(I apologise for the language barrier - it might not be technically accurate for the english language)
blabbering that psychology isn't debatable and lacks rigor in experimentation is laughable, at best. we get papers over papers of psychologists citicizing each other over the smallest mistakes, loopholes and possible inconsistencies. if you'd like to see a shit storm a psychologist (well, behaviorist) started (nowadays, more or less the status quo [makes
/. arguments look bland tbh], although less public) check out W. James (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James ) or Darwins later years (yeap, many of his works fall into the category of psychology. He did a lot for evolutionary psychology.).
disclosure: I study cognitive science (to put it bluntly, a mix of CS and PS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science) of which one main field of application is R&D (yeah, the skynet guys
:-\ ).
p.s. tbh, whoever modded you up most likely got triggered by your yellow press style. just to formalise my point; you are incredibly wrong. see above why.
I'll answer any questions.
