Against the racialization of reason: Science as a universal method of problem-solving

A growing body of critical scholarship in psychology contends that its standard research methods, including randomized controlled trials, correlational designs, and psychometric measurement, are intrinsically rooted in White, Western, or colonial epistemologies and therefore function as mechanisms of epistemic exclusion/oppression and structural racism. These claims extend beyond concerns about unequal participation to argue that scientific rationality itself is epistemically and morally compromised. This paper critically examines such arguments, evaluates their epistemic coherence, and defends the rational foundations of scientific psychology's methods. Drawing on meta-scientific and philosophical work, particularly Popper's evolutionary epistemology and Laudan's problem-solving account of rationality, the paper argues that the legitimacy of research methods does not depend on their social or cultural origins, but rather on their openness to criticism, their capacity for error correction, and their demonstrated effectiveness in solving problems. While decolonial critiques appropriately highlight historical injustices and institutional failures within psychology, they frequently conflate the social genealogy of scientific practices with their epistemic validity. The paper further argues that proposed methodological replacements have not yet demonstrated comparable epistemic grounding or problem-solving productivity.