On Models, Prediction, and Scientific Roles Thereof: Commentary on Sanbonmatsu et al. (2025)

We commend Sanbonmatsu et al. (2025) for centring metatheory and metamethod as remedies to “difficult research problems”. However, we wish to depart from their conceptualisation of what models are and what role they play in psychological theorising. Under computationalism, models are not a container for observations through being fit to neurobehavioural data and should not be held to the standard of providing us with numerical predictions. Computational cognitive models can only play their role of mediating from theory to data and back, if and only if we buttress their special status against confusions with other model types, such as with inferential statistical models of the data. This is a realistic goal for our fields. Ultimately, theory crisis or no, blurring the boundary between model, theory, and data in our metatheoretical calculus, results in many of the problems all authors have pointed out.