Scott Lilienfeld

During a James Randi Educational Foundation panel at the 2014 Amaz!ng Meeting, Lilienfeld was asked if he thought rationality could be taught. He responded that rationality and critical thinking are not natural to the human species and to some degree it can be taught, but added that they are very domain specific and may not generalise to other areas; a person can be completely rational in one area and very irrational in others. He said "I see science in many ways as a set of safeguards against confirmation bias", and that, while the structure of general science and the scientific community work to reduce confirmation bias, individual scientists are not generally as susceptible to confirmation bias as other people are. Therefore, he said, "It's up to the scientific community ... to hold their feet to the fire and make sure that their confirmation bias does not get in the way of their corroborating their own hypotheses."

Lilienfeld, along with his colleague Sally Satel, has dedicated much of his career in psychology to debunking "the pop neuroscience that keeps making headlines". They target such practices as functional magnetic resonance imaging (or neuroimaging) to "detect" moral and spiritual centers of the brain, which they call "oversimplified neurononsense". Their book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience was a finalist in the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science in 2013. He has stated:

In 2002, Lilienfeld founded the Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice. He is also a consulting editor for Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptic Magazine. He participates on the editorial boards of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Psychological Assessment, Perspectives on Psychological Science and Clinical Psychology Review, and writes articles for Scientific American Mind and Psychology Today.

From 1990 to 1994, Lilienfeld was an assistant professor of psychology at State University of New York in Albany, NY. From there, he moved to Emory University and served as associate professor until he earned full professorship in 2000.

In 1986, he began a clinical internship at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which he completed in 1987. He earned a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota in 1990.

Lilienfeld studied psychology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982. As an undergraduate, he was influenced by the work of David T. Lykken on psychopathic personality. Over time, he developed an interest in personality disorders, dissociative disorders, personality assessment, anxiety disorders, psychiatric classification, pseudoscience in psychology, and evidence-based practices in clinical psychology. Lilienfeld considers himself a generalist, saying "this breadth makes me a better researcher and thinker" with a broad perspective on the field of psychology.

Scott O. Lilienfeld (born December 23, 1960) is a professor of psychology at Emory University and advocate for evidence-based treatments and methods within the field. He is known for his books 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology, Brainwashed, and others that explore and sometimes debunk psychological claims that appear in the popular press. Along with having his work featured in major U.S. newspapers and journals such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Scientific American, Lilienfeld has made television appearances on 20/20, CNN and the CBS Evening News.

Lilienfeld was born on December 23, 1960 to Ralph and Thelma Lilienfeld of New York, N.Y. Growing up, he was interested in paleontology and astronomy, but decided to study psychology after a high school course, then later a few college courses, piqued his interest. He has stated: "Although my love for natural science never waned, I eventually fell in love with the mysteries of the internal world — the human mind — even more than those of the external world."