Responsibility for Raw Data.

Recently a colleague presented some data from his research and I asked him what he thought about a particular interpretation of his results which I suggested His response was to the effect that my interpretation was an interesting idea but that we did not really know the facts. My point is that he acted as if what he has thought about his extensive experience with the problem under discussion had no value because it was subjective. I believe this is a widespread attitude among psychologists. I am not saying that subjective functions are sufficient to the scientific process, but rather that they are very important to it, and even necessary except in the relatively few instances in which a deduction from a theory becomes the hypothesis. Much recent psychological research has been unproductive, I believe, not for lack of methodological sophistication or objectivity, but because of poorly reasoned hypotheses. It is the subjective process, the thinking about relevant data and our own relevant experiences, which is so important to framing hypotheses which are more likely to stand up under objective testing. Has the dominant point of view in psychology gone so far in the emphasis on objectivity that we have lost sight of the value of thinking, and further, have so much come to distrust any subjectivity that we are restricted, inhibited, unfree in the thinking process, afraid to trust our minds? EMANUEL M. BERGER Student Counseling Bureau University of Minnesota