What Psychology as a Science Owes Neal Miller: The Example of His Biofeedback Research

Neal Miller did more to make psychology a science than any other investigator. His importance does not lie with any specific discoveries that he made, but rather with his way of doing scientific research, which involved pursuing a line of logic systematically through sequences of experiments, and paying attention to several alternate hypotheses that could answer each of the experimental questions addressed. His approach was a model of what has been called “Strong Inference” and that is characteristically used in the hard sciences. His biofeedback research is used as a case history of his method of approach.