Well, I actually spend most of my time studying the Logic & The Philosophy of Science at the department where most of the currently prevalent folk-theory of it originated, so I'd say I'm fairly familiar with the various reasons put forth throughout the Method's history. That's not an argument from authority-- just a rejection of your implication that I'm not familiar with your postulated 'reasons'.
The paramaters within which experimental psychology currently functions are largely an attempt to ape the success of an apparently similar research program in the physical sciences, but without enough hold upon core elements/constituents whose relationship can be precisely theorised about. DNA and Neurology are held up as the light at the end of the tunnel that will change this situation, but ultimately what we get are data + unjustified assumptions in and data + unjustified assumptions out without anything that in essence resembles the theoretical/elemental precision of Physics. Rejection of these assumptions tends to be lumped in with rejection of the scientific project-- with the 'they haven't figured it out yet so God did it' or 'science can't do subjective experience' crowd. Pod'Lair re-adjusts the lens through which these elements are looked for, and in doing so actually presents precise constituents that can be accurately and precisely theorised about of the kind that behavioral sciences so desire. But it cannot present this re-adjustment through the language of their current research program, which is sure about how it's going to get where it seeks to go without having made much genuine progress towards getting there.
The idea that the Scientific Method transcends the limitations of intuition is also total bunk. Sure, it hones it and provides safeguards against the traps it tends to fall into, but you clearly haven't really thought about what goes on at the heights and intersections of mathematics and physics, or about how those heights relate to other Science's self-images.
The lens-training you're criticising also isn't in a strictly different category from the prerequisite training in mathematics or adopting certain working assumptions which is involved in a Scientific education. The point is whether the research program yields predictive results, which, in the case of Reading, it most certainly does, and to a far greater degree than competing research programs enshrined in institutionalized behavioral sciences and their requirements of presentation.
Here's a basic course: there are 16 configurations, each of which manifests a distinct conflagration of cues in an identifiable pattern. These cues are associated with very strict and distinct kinds of behavioural orientation or activity. They are also composed of 8 different constituent patterns which can be identified in action across the 16 configurations. Whether a person is energised or de-energised, getting momentum or shutting them down, can also be tangibly observed. And all of these tangible patterns/cues can be observed in real time and in interaction with/in relation to what an individual is saying or doing. Certain patterns cannot and do not manifest in certain individuals, and those individuals will be the ones which our theory predicts said cues cannot and will not manifest in. Certain cues can, will, and must manifest in certain individuals as they become more animated and tangibly energised, and those individuals will be the ones which our theory predicts. Certain sets of cues will never manifest together, and our theory predicts that as well. As well as many other things, many of them very tangibly and clearly laid out in terms of very simple and clear cues that even a dull-witted individual could grasp with some basic effort.
Find an individual in which this theory does not apply, and that would be a form of falsification. We make precise claims. We make falsifiable claims.
You are the one using psuedo-scientific rhetoric to avoid or discredit that evidence, and that is an abuse of the spirit of the scientific method. Observing this basic pattern is a lens-reorientation, and it requires looking at the problem in a certain way, engaging certain faculties-- just as a mathematical or experimental problem does. From here, you can catch up to speed with implications. The point, though, is that this basic adoption of a suitable perspective-- a lens, a ressearch program, an instrument (microscopes have *lenses*, try looking up what they did for scientific progress)--
yields predictive results on a scale and with an accuracy that
formerly assumed lenses do not and cannot. In Lakatosian/'Scientific' terms, this makes it
truer.
In Kuhnian terms, it is no surprise that a
paradigm shift on this scale would run up against institutional hierarchies and folk expectations like Pod'Lair does. Give the huge scale of the re-orientation involved, it's no surprise how fringe it is now and will remain for a time. The difficulty in behavioral sciences, especially, is that data/assumptions/theories are so loose that the kind of explosive falsification made possible by Physics' precision isn't expected or possible within current structures. That explosively precise context requires creation, aided by a certain clarity of focus and caliber of an elemental theory-- Pod'Lair
is that theory. It has to start from the outside. Another difficulty is that Physics could at least be cordoned off away from all the terrible shit that illumination of how things are actually working would reveal about people in power/with a vested interest-- Catholicism etc. fell far, but relatively isomorphic power structures were quite immune to it. With P'L that ain't and won't be so, and those structures live in your minds. That's how they work. We're up against a lot.
I suppose this is what science must look like to someone who doesn't understand the reasons for using it. I believe we have a senior member who has argued in some 5000 posts the case you are trying to make and only frustrated himself in the process.
The simple answer is that scientific method reveals and transcends the limitations of intuition. If it didn't, we might still, with a little lens-training, believe that the stars all rotate around us.
And that's one of the problems, it's just overdone -- kind of like the promotion of Obama in 2008 as the next Messiah figure.
