An Old Problem with a New Solution, Raising Classical Questions: A Commentary on Humphry

Separating models, ideas, and data to avoid a paradox: Rejoinder to Humphry

“…However, after having read Humphry (2011), we realized that by theory he means the laws and the relations between laws, mathematically derived and empirically tested, that assign attributes their units typical of physics. This is light years away from where psychological theory resides (Barrett, 2011; Heene, 2011; Kyngdon, 2011). In this context, one may also consult Sherry (2011), who argues that psychological measurement could benefit from the development of temperature measurement, and Mari (2013), who argues that measurement of a property is a feature derived from experiment, not algebraic constraints.…”

Detecting Violations of Unidimensionality by Order-Restricted Inference Methods

“…Even more important, as a direct result of testing these cancelation axioms, the presented approach enables one to test the only implicitly assumed hypothesis of most psychometrical models that the attribute under consideration is a continuous quantity. Given that "...psychologists are quite cavalier in their use of the loaded term 'measure"' [74] because they have not yet attempted an explicit unit of measurement [75,76], testing the assumption of continuous quantity is of critical importance for the advancement of a science.…”

Additive conjoint measurement and the resistance toward falsifiability in psychology

“…As illustrated elsewhere (cf. Schönemann, 1994; Heene, 2011) psychology seemed to be overwhelmed by the successful application of mathematics in classical physics and invented “… models with close reference to those of classical physics, which were then applied to psychological observations” (Heene, 2011, p. 53; italics in the original). This approach ignores that the development of mathematical models has been closely interwoven with the empirical observation of invariant phenomena in physics implying that the mathematical models have often been derived from those phenomena (see also Sherry, 2011).…”