Can psychology become a science?

I am profoundly grateful to Tom Bouchard for helping me learn to think scientifically. Scientific thinking, which is characterized by a set of safeguards against confirmation bias, does not come naturally to the human species, as the relatively recent appearance of science in history attests. Even today, scientific thinking is in woefully short supply in many domains of psychology, including clinical psychology and cognate disciplines. I survey five key threats to scientific psychology - (a) political correctness, (b) radical environmentalism, (c) the resurrection of common sense and intuition as arbiters of scientific truth, (d) postmodernism, and (e) pseucloscience - and conclude that these threats must be confronted directly by psychological science. I propose a set of educational and institutional reforms that should place psychology on firmer scientific footing. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.