Rhetoric and Clinical Science: Maximizing Rationality Within Post-Justificationist Knowledge

Scott Lilienfeld wrote about science and metascience and cared deeply about clearly understanding the quality of science. Lilienfeld criticized obscurantist language such as “neurobabble” and poorly defined terms such as “microaggressions.” Science is a social institution that involves communication through language. This article presents a rhetorical analysis of science. The study of the linguistic dimension of science leads to an analysis of science as rhetoric, that is, the multiple methods of persuasion employed by scientists for multiple audiences and consumers. In addition, the failure of justificationist epistemologies to capture what occurs in knowledge generation also leads to the view that science has a rhetorical dimension in which knowledge-generating processes remain rational but nonjustificationist. In this article, I argue that rhetoric provides a rich additional dimension for criticism in clinical psychological science to identify error. Engaging the rhetorical dimension of science can therefore make science more rational, not less. Some major tropes used in psychological journals are identified and criticized.