In Part I, we saw that psychology has been implicitly and sometimes explicitly present in metascience for many years. In a weak sense, this very presence provides a justification for psychology of science. That is, if other metascientists seem functionally unable to do without psychology in their work, it is better that we explicitly develop a psychology of science than let it continue to develop implicitly, haphazardly, and unsystematically.

The present section contains three chapters that follow this thread and more explicitly address some justifications for a psychology of science. Such justifications cannot be taken for granted. Some past scholars have suggested that psychology has little in the way of a constructive contribution to make to our understanding of scientific progress, that its role should be limited to explaining only the irrational aspects of science, or that psychological contributions are redundant to those already made by other disciplines. The authors of chapters in this second section consider a selection of these issues, partly responding to criticisms of psychology of science, partly making a positive case for the role of psychological contributions, and partly assessing honestly some limitations that psychology of science must acknowledge. One approach to the justification of psychology of science is to examine and discuss the merits of past criticisms that such a specialty is not justified.

The first part of the book contains two chapters that discuss the history of the psychology of science. It seems odd to be discussing the history of a specialty that we previously suggested may not yet exist in any organized sense. Yet the psychology of science has historical roots not only in the parent discipline of psychology but also in philosophy, history, and sociology of science. We become educated and informed about these roots, and about the important issues to which they give rise for psychologists, by studying that history. History teaches us about important accomplishments and controversies that might involve psychologists, about paths to pursue and blind alleys to avoid, and about the kind of reception psychologists can expect to receive from other scholars of science. Perhaps as important, history teaches us a sense of humility about our place in the larger scheme of science studies by reminding us of the critical contributions made to psychology of science by its early pioneers.

One of those pioneers is Donald T. Campbell (1950, 1959), a psychologist who is particularly well suited to teach us our history. In the first chapter in this section, Campbell avers that he is only alluding to a possible history that someone else may eventually write. But this typical modesty on his part is belied by the breadth of material that he taps.

Research in the sociology of science has taught us that scientific specialties undergo characteristic changes in the course of their development. At their inception, they consist of little more than provocative sets of hypotheses being pursued by relatively isolated researchers working chiefly within the framework of an older, well-established discipline (Kuhn, 1970; Mulkay, 1979; Mullins, 1973). Gradually, however, networks of like-minded scientists begin to form, as they become aware that their converging interests differentiate them in important theoretical or methodological respects from the dominant paradigms of their parent discipline. Intellectually, this networking is often facilitated by the publication of a program statement that crystallizes promising directions to be pursued by the group (Mullins, 1973). The heightened ingroup communication that results may promote greater coherence in the research being conducted by clusters of researchers, and if conditions are favorable, may trigger a “publication explosion” in the group's scientific output (De Mey, 1981). Eventually, as the group's work gains recognition and institutional support, the field may become an established specialty in its own right (Mulkay, 1979). Research has suggested that this hypothesized developmental process is consistent with the evolution of both successful natural science (De Mey, 1981; Griffith & Mullins, 1972) and social science (Mullins, 1973; Neimeyer, 1985; Shadish & Reichardt, 1987) specialties.

We believe that the emerging specialty of psychology of science can be usefully construed in these terms.

The seeds of this book were sown originally in a series of discussions by its four editors, begun in January 1985 in the Psychology Department at Memphis State University. The proximal cause of those discussions was provided by Tom Cook of Northwestern University, who was a visiting scholar with the Center for Applied Psychological Research during the first three months of that year. Tom simply pointed out the obvious to us – something it often takes an outsider to do. He noted that the four of us shared interests in philosophy, history, and sociology of science. Specifically, Neimeyer (1985) had conducted a sociological analysis of the growth of personal construct theory from the perspective of Nicholas Mullins's model of the development of theory groups. Gholson had compared and criticized recent philosophy of science by Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan, using the paradigm clashes between competing conditioning and cognitive theories as an example (Barker & Gholson, 1984a, 1984b; Gholson & Barker, 1985). Houts had examined the nature of psychologists' value systems and their influence on scientific orientation (Krasner & Houts, 1984). Shadish had written about salient epistemological problems arising in program evaluation (Cook & Shadish, 1986; Shadish, 1986).

Of course, each of us had been aware of the others' works, and of the possible mutual interests that were implied. Tom Cook's prompt was most helpful because he pointed out that such a concentration of interests in metascience was somewhat unusual in a psychology department, and that we ought to do something constructive to take advantage of the situation.

What is the psychology of science, and where has it been all these years? Although contributions from philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science have burgeoned over the last half-century or more, the same cannot be said about the contributions of psychologists to our understanding of science. Yet as we will see in this book, both the methods and the theories of psychology have important and unique contributions to make to science studies. In fact, a sizable psychological literature pertinent to science studies already exists; but the contributors to that literature have rarely identified themselves explicitly either as psychologists of science or as members of a coherent specialty called psychology of science.

Today, however, we think that psychology of science is a specialty whose time has now come. Substantively, psychological contributions to science studies are increasing in frequency and quality. Sociologically, psychologists are beginning to identify themselves as interested in the topic. But much work needs to be done if the psychology of science is to achieve its potential. In the present book, we plan to further this agenda – to examine the history of and justification for a psychology of science, to outline its possible content and methods, to document some if its accomplishments and its potential, and most of all, to intrigue and encourage fellow psychologists to bring their expertise to bear on the study of science.

One goal of all science studies, including the psychology of science, is to improve the quality of science. This goal is presupposed in philosophical discussions of progress in science (Lakatos, 1978; Laudan, 1977), because science that “progresses” is presumably a more worthwhile pursuit than science that does not. Such a goal is also implied by efforts to develop specific indicators of the process and outcome of science (Holton, 1982). Such indicators are demonstrably of interest to those who want to determine the worth of their investment in science.

Assessing the quality of science and suggesting changes that might improve science are tasks for science evaluation. In this chapter, I would like to make three contributions to the latter topic. Starting at the broadest conceptual level, I will explicate in some detail the nature of science evaluation, providing a framework within which the mechanics of evaluation can be considered, and some indications of the forms that it might take in practice. Narrowing the focus somewhat, I will then briefly suggest some contributions that psychology might make to science evaluation. I will then close at the most concrete level, presenting three brief empirical studies that illustrate these psychological contributions.

Science evaluation

Science studies used to consist of just two topics, the philosophy and the history of science. Beginning in the 1940s, the sociology of science joined in the effort (Collins, 1983; Mulkay, 1980). Today, the number of disciplines studying the operations and consequences of science is rapidly proliferating, and includes economics, anthropology, and political science, as well (Ziman, 1984).