CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is pretty much the most empirically validated form of effective treatment for a wide variety of people, with a wide range of disorders / problems.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3584580/

It is also so straightforward that many people who are not in serious mental anguish / disordered thinking can just actually do it on their own after a few actual talk sessions, by following some steps and rules that can fit on a few pages of paper.

https://positivepsychology.com/cbt-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-techniques-worksheets/

I am not disagreeing with you though.

Much of the history of psychology as a field is built on theories that are not testable, do not allow for a way to do a test that would affirm or negate the actual validity of theory.

To add more fun to this:

Turns out the fundamental theory behind why SSRIs... work... is basically bunk, woefully incorrect at best.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-to-the-grave/202209/we-still-dont-know-how-antidepressants-work

Almost every single study on the efficacy of SSRIs in treating what they are prescribed to treat is either funded or conducted... by the people selling them, the drug companies.

And they almost never do long term studies, and they almost always massively downplay the severity and prevalence of side effects, which often don't arise until after long term usage.

Remeber when we had an opiod crisis because the Sackler family and other drug companies heavily pushed low quality research and recommendations onto doctors?

https://www.bmj.com/content/378/bmj-2021-067606

Studies similar to this one have become more and more common in the last few years, with it basicslly looking like SSRIs are either no more effective than placebo, or are nearly imperceptively better, just barely outside of statistically equivalent, or that they are better than placebo, but only for a completely unpredictable subset of people.

Psychiatrists have been very vehemently arguing about this crisis for the last few years, usually not in public, but uh, they don't like to state it as bluntly as I just have, because if it turns out SSRIs and many other mind altering pharmacueticals... don't actually treat what they are intended to, that they don't actually work in the ways they tell their patients they do... but do very clearly cause negative side effects... well that'd mean they've basically been doing medical malpractice their whole careers.

Whoops!

Psychology gets unfairly singled out wrt replication but the same issues are found in a lot of other disciplines, such as biomed.

Pure psychology research definitely has its methodological and rigour issues that cast doubt on all its findings. However I think working psychologists in industry have validated psychological methods (A/B testing) and theories (dark patterns) for making profit at the expense of users’ privacy, mental health, time, and attention.

The biggest issue is that every brain is different, and you can't slap absolutes on that. One study may be completely accurate, but with their specific sample.