Medicine has the same restrictions, and has advanced a lot faster than psychology it seems.
It has similar ethical restrictions, yes. Given that both involve human beings, that is to be expected. But comparing them and their relative progress is an apples and oranges comparison. Medicine is considered a natural (hard) science, while psych is considered a social (soft) science.
Let me make an analogy to computers. Medicine is focused almost exclusively on the hardware that makes a person's body work. Psych is focused more on the software running on one particular piece of that hardware (the brain, obviously). Now, neither field really claims to know how the brain works in it's entirety. So psych is trying to analyze unknown software running on not entirely understood hardware. Added to that complexity is the fact that the software is somewhat different on each machine each of those also being somewhat different. It can hardly be surprising that progress might be slower.
And finally on this point, what does the speed of progress have to do with anything anyway? Math as a science is moving at a snail's pace compared to, say, Newton's time. All science moves in fits and starts. So what?
Now ill answer Mordoks bit:
Put it like this, i tend to be intrested in all solid science. So for me, what I said would end up being true.
In computer science there tends to be alot more tests to do for a given problem. For example to solve Othello i believe it has a tree in the order of magnitude of 10^27 to do tests on. And that is for one simple game.
I'm sorry to say, but Othello or even Chess are not computer SCIENCE problems. They are problems where computers make excellent tools. I can sit down with a forest's worth of paper and do the same thing. Assuming I had a near-infinte life-span at least. Your example problems are traditionally considered more math or game theory problems.
Again, I hate to sound belligerent, but if you do not understand what computer science is, then you should not be trying to use it to justify your point.
As for hard sciences, you can find lots of analogue in it too. For example Astronomy, but what you dont get is lots of astronomers parading all their stuff around as fact, they says its the theory that fits what we currently know.
From this, I have to assume you don't follow the ongoing debates over string theory.
Psychologists way too frequently parade theory as absolute fact, hence my issue with the discipline.
This is hardly something unique to psychology. I may be wrong, but what I think you are seeing is the result of media's portrayal of any science. I can't count the number of times I've seen news reports of this or a new study, particularly when they involve children (much better attention getting -- 'won't someone please think of the children!'). Very often, the news will report the study in whatever way gets the strongest reaction and few people will go back and look at the study itself. Before you know it, 'indications that as many as 60% of the subjects' becomes 'the majority of those tested'. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has even seen cases where the news report will make something sound the exact opposite of what the scientific report was trying to show.
Until then, it is effectively a social science, not a real science.
Yes, it is a social science. It's part of the definition as it deals with society and those in it. That does not mean it's not real. I begin to think that you do not understand what science itself is at the core. Failure to understand what something is does not make it any less real, only less real to you.
