Why Ineffective Psychotherapies Appear to Work

@article{Lilienfeld2014WhyIP,
  title={Why Ineffective Psychotherapies Appear to Work},
  author={Scott O. Lilienfeld and Lorie Ritschel and Steven Jay Lynn and Robin L. Cautin and Robert D. Latzman},
  journal={Perspectives on Psychological Science},
  year={2014},
  volume={9},
  pages={355 - 387}
}
The past 40 years have generated numerous insights regarding errors in human reasoning. Arguably, clinical practice is the domain of applied psychology in which acknowledging and mitigating these errors is most crucial. We address one such set of errors here, namely, the tendency of some psychologists and other mental health professionals to assume that they can rely on informal clinical observations to infer whether treatments are effective. We delineate four broad, underlying cognitive… 
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