PSYC02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Karl Popper, Yellow Fever, Falsifiability
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How to think straight about psychology (ninth edition) final exam notes. Chapter two: how to foil little green men in the head. 1793, severe epidemic of yellow fever struck philadelphia. Benjamin rush were one of the few physicians available to treat thousands of yellow fever cases. Following the epidemic he even became more confident of the effectiveness of his treatment even though many of his patients had died. If patient got better it was taken as proof bloodletting worked, and if not than rush interpreted this to the mean that the patient had been too ill for any treatment to work. Benjamin rush violated one of the most important rules regarding the construction and testing of theories in science: he made it impossible to falsify his theory. Scientific theories must always be stated in such a way that the predictions derived from them could potentially be shown to be false.