As Cptn has pointed out, legalization of marijuana would arguably solve more problems than it would create.
Regarding police abuse, I can't find the study which I referenced in the first place, and in fact I seem to be finding very little altogether. I've dropped off an email to someone who works in this area, and I'll check the papers I have at my parents' house over the break if you like. If I can't find that quotation I'll retract the statement and we'll just say "police are a bad group to ask if you want objective information about deviance", since that was my original point. Regardless, here are a few related quotations:
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The survey results provide interesting and useful insight into the problem of domestic assault within the police community. First, as a profession, there is a need to realize this issue is an important one requiring attention. While the survey does not show an overwhelming increase in reported incidents of domestic violence involving police officers, any moderate level of increase cannot be ignored, and may in fact be the beginning of a trend.
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The second effect of a paramilitary environment is often in terms of displaced anger and frustration. Police officers are just as likely to disagree with their supervisors or be angered by orders they do not agree with as any other civilian in their job. However, expressing anger or disagreement in a paramilitary environment is often seen as insubordination. Police officers often take this anger or frustration home, displacing it into their relationships (Honig and White, 1994).
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As for psychology being a science, science is more a process (method of gathering information about the world) than a thing ("doing science"), the process of generating a hypothesis or theory and then testing it (gathering observations). Good science (as per Karl Popper's work) does not prove anything but rather seeks to disprove things. Each observation that supports a hypothesis or theory strengthens it but does not exclude the possibility of finding anomalies in the future. Good psychology generates hypotheses that are then tested. Certainly in the past some early psychologists generated theories
after observation, which is extremely problematic, but at this time this process is generally not accepted in the larger psychological community. This is the main problem with people like Freud, Jung and Adler, who are generally not given much consideration anymore, outside some small circles of counselors.
Do we have any psychologists or similarly-qualified individuals on the board? If you haven't jumped in yet, I'm assuming you're not going to, so I'll just go for it.
Counselors are generally the private types in the phone book. You also have clinical psychologists, who are essential psychiatrists without an MD and therefore without the ability to prescribe drugs. However they are often employed by governments, in hospitals, prisons, etc., working alongside psychiatrists and social workers in many cases. Clinical psychologists generally have very nearly a decade of schooling and research things like addictions, disorders, disabilities, etc. Also note that, at least in Canada, only certified clinical psychologists can actually call themselves psychologists. Hence why you hear the terms counselor, psychotherapist, etc. sometimes. These people may have anything from an Internet diploma right through to multiple Ph.Ds, but without being accredited by the professional organization, they cannot call themselves psychologists. In Alberta and Quebec you only need a Master's to become a psychologist, in the rest of Canada you need a Doctorate.
Most people consider these fields to make up psychology, and are unaware of the other areas in the field. But not all individuals in psychology even work with people.
-Neuropsychology: Nervous system/brain anatomy, processes, pharmacology. This is where research on plasticity, strokes, marijuana, tinnitus, circadian rhythms, etc. gets done, generally. Many of the advances in medicine you hear about in the news is actually work being done by neuroscientists.
-Cognitive psychology: Memory, thought processes, consciousness, language, awareness, spacial ability...
-Industrial/organizational psychology: Group/team theory, leadership, organizational conflict and change... basically management psychology. In fact, management programs generally refer to this area as organizational behaviour, but it's essentially the same thing. Managers get the vast majority of their information in this area from psychological research.
-Perception: The senses, how the brain processes sensory information...
-Cognitive ergonomics and environmental psychology: More thought processes, how humans process incoming information, environmental design, human/computer interaction, artificial intelligence - Google, Microsoft, HP, Ford, Boeing all employ these types...
-Developmental psychology: Everything but in the context of aging and human development, from infants to the aged.
-Social psychology: Perhaps the parent of I/O psychology, human interaction, groups, conflict, race, sexual orientation, love, the media...
-Evolutionary psychology: The historical development of human psychology, lots of looking at other species here to put things in perspective.
-Comparative psychology: Animals in relation to us. Generally primates but also everything from octopuses to parrots to dogs.
-Theoretical psychology: History and critical examination of psychology as as a whole... philosophy of... research methods.
I think that covers most of it. So in short, by the most accepted definition, modern psychology is a hard science, and there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of research articles out there to prove it.