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One possible advantage the "harder" sciences have is that another study that builds on the previous one can in some ways act as a replication. If I publish som

by entee 11y ago

One possible advantage the "harder" sciences have is that another study that builds on the previous one can in some ways act as a replication. If I publish something claiming bacteria has a gene X that produces phenotype Y, then a subsequent study that transfers gene X into a different bacteria must also observe Y. Otherwise something is fishy, and often the second set of researchers will go back and reexamine the original result. It's rare that work in science is directly, point for point replicated, it's unsexy, expensive work. The fact that the harder sciences have somewhat of a built in control mitigates but by no means eliminates the risk of bad science surviving. I can't think of an analogous process in the softer sciences. Seeing if a phenomenon is replicated in a different context does not implicitly re-test the original work in the same way.

asuffield 11y ago
One of the biggest things about the "harder" sciences is that there's usually a whole engineering discipline behind them as well. Nothing reproduces a result as effectively as a host of engineers building real things on the back of it. If it doesn't work, we'll find out pretty soon, and if it does work then we'll have lots of evidence to show it. The problem with results like "ego depletion" is that their utility is fuzzy at best. With no clear application, we don't have a body of practical results using it.
jpfed 11y ago
>If I publish something claiming bacteria has a gene X that produces phenotype Y, then a subsequent study that transfers gene X into a different bacteria must also observe Y. There is no guarantee (and it often isn't the case) that the phenotype observed in the first organism is purely the result of gene X; its effects may be context-dependent. To take this a little further, I think it's plausible that a soft scientific question differs from a hard one specifically in terms of how easy it is to separate the phenomenon in question from its context.

by entee 11y ago

asuffield 11y ago

One of the biggest things about the "harder" sciences is that there's usually a whole engineering discipline behind them as well. Nothing reproduces a result as effectively as a host of engineers building real things on the back of it. If it doesn't work, we'll find out pretty soon, and if it does work then we'll have lots of evidence to show it. The problem with results like "ego depletion" is that their utility is fuzzy at best. With no clear application, we don't have a body of practical results using it.

jpfed 11y ago

>If I publish something claiming bacteria has a gene X that produces phenotype Y, then a subsequent study that transfers gene X into a different bacteria must also observe Y. There is no guarantee (and it often isn't the case) that the phenotype observed in the first organism is purely the result of gene X; its effects may be context-dependent. To take this a little further, I think it's plausible that a soft scientific question differs from a hard one specifically in terms of how easy it is to separate the phenomenon in question from its context.