ABSTRACT
The provision of practical advice is the major objective of this book but not the only one. Being a good researcher also requires understanding of the process of science. In this chapter and the next, I focus on both philosophical and psychological issues that bear on this process. Philosophical issues concern the nature of science, what constitutes scientific knowledge and how we may best obtain it. I discuss the nature of logical or deductive inference in this chapter and statistical inference in the next. I will contrast two broad philosophies of science as Popperian and Bayesian and express a clear preference for the latter. Psychological issues concern what is known about thinking and reasoning and how it may influence scientific thinking, especially through the operation of cognitive biases. Understanding these should help you to avoid inferential errors that too commonly occur in psychological research.
