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Law and the Fireside Inductions: Some Reflections of a Clinical Psychologist 1 , 2 ,
Author(s) -
Meehl Paul E.
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1971.tb00679.x
Subject(s) - introspection , causal inference , population , inference , parametric statistics , psychology , epistemology , social psychology , sociology , law , cognitive psychology , political science , econometrics , mathematics , statistics , philosophy , demography
Legislators and judges have relied upon the “fireside inductions” (common sense, anecdotal, introspective, and culturally transmitted beliefs about human behavior) in making and enforcing law as a mode of social control. The behavior sciences conflict at times with the fireside inductions. While the sources of error in “common knowledge” about behavior are considerable, the behavior sciences are plagued with methodological problems which often render their generalized conclusions equally dubious. Legal applications of generalizations from experimental research on humans and animals in laboratory contexts often involve risky parametric and population extrapolations. Statistical analysis of file data suffers from inherent interpretative ambiguities as to causal inference from correlations. Quasi‐experiments in the “real‐life” setting may often be the methodologically optimal data‐source.