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I disagree. I'm glad that science is becoming less associated with the "hard" sciences and is being used more broadly. After all, science is much more than simp

I disagree. I'm glad that science is becoming less associated with the "hard" sciences and is being used more broadly. After all, science is much more than simply the sciences that strictly use the scientific method. The "soft" sciences like psychology are sciences even though their methods are sometimes not easily reproducible. But we shouldn't be resigning outreslves simply because the "soft" science methods are more difficult than the "hard" sciences.

LoSboccacc 10y ago
That's the definition for science and doing resesrch. This line of reasoning brought us Theranos and http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248 http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f... So no science as a field should remain well defined in scope and meaning, in the same way crafting shouldn't be blurred with engineering.
- douche 10y ago
  Science without the scientific method takes us back to alchemy, or astrology, or numerology. Those precursors eventually refined their methods and developed into sciences, but were not sciences. Most of the "soft" sciences appear to be closer to those protosciences, particularly when so much of the crackpot, discredited theories still circulate in the zeitgeist the way they do, as in, say psychology.
- James001 10y ago
  Right, so long as we can agree that science is not limited to the scientific method. Science should be well defined, but not limited to arbitrary confines.
  - tagrun 10y ago
    Science is well defined. Oh, so when science is defined in the way Popper defines it, it is "arbitrary confines", but when it is defined in a way to legitimize cargo cult science, it is "well defined".
    - James001 10y ago
      Arbitrary confines of science is when you limit science to the scientific method. Well-defined science is frankly an insult to science
      - tagrun 10y ago
        > Science should be well defined, but not limited to arbitrary confines. > Well-defined science is frankly an insult to science. Spoken like a true pseudoscientist. Yes, it should be an insult, right? How dare they can expect a scientist to use scientific method for all their results? I mean, it sounds totally crazy, insulting! And more importantly, how are we gonna publish papers or get grants then?
        James001 10y ago
        Strawmen for days! Just answer me this: Do you believe that the science is purely limited to the scientific method? Just riddle me that and I'll be content. Just keep in mind that you'll be outing yourself as scientifically illiterate.
beloch 10y ago
If you go to most universities, psychology is a part of the faculty of Humanities, not science. There's a reason for that. To call a discipline a science, it needs to use the scientific method, not just sometimes, but always. It needs testable hypotheses. Psychology sometimes has this, but often it does not. There is certainly reason for non-science fields to use scientific methods at times, but that doesn't necessarily mean those fields should be called sciences. An illustrative example is the difference between "medicine" and "medical science". Your doctor has studied medicine. He or she, in addition to studying some medical science, has learned interview techniques, psychology, and various other aspects of a craft that are, in no way, scientific. If you talk to a doctor in a non-medical setting (many are specifically trained not to reveal ignorance to patients in order to maintain patient confidence), you'll find they're remarkably ignorant about the how's or why's of the human body, except when it comes to something they've been trained to spot and fix. A huge portion of their training centers on knowing when to do nothing at all, because medical intervention almost always carries it's own risks. In his or her daily job, your doctor does not employ the scientific method. At least, you should probably hope you are not being experimented on by your family physician! Some doctors do research in the field of "medical science", but this really is an entirely different job from being a family physician, surgeon, etc.. Medicine is a highly skilled craft that sometimes uses science, but it is not itself a science.
- James001 10y ago
  Actually psychology is a part of the sciences in most universities, atleast in Canada. There's a reason for that too, I'm sure. Also, your assertion that to call a discipline a science, it needs to use the scientific method, is well... demonstrably false, simply by virtue of the fact that we are having this debate. The scientific method produces very reliable knowledge, but it is not the only way to produce knowledge that is reliable. There is also knowledge that we rely on that is not as rock solid as knowledge obtained from the scientific method, but which is still valuable and still falls under the realm of science, because it is still part of the systematic pursuit of progressively more reliable knowledge.
  - tagrun 10y ago
tagrun 10y ago
This is exactly what's wrong with those "sciences": you can't do things scientifically (meaning the way "natural" scientists do) when it works for you and do something else when things start to get hairy, and call it science at the end of the day, because "there's more to it than scientific method" or because unicorns and dragons. That's the "fooling yourself" Feynman talks about. And no, it's not just that majority of psychology results are "not easily reproducible". Furthermore, again, science isn't just data fitting and extrapolation. A real theory gives you a lot more than what you put into it, including novel phenomena. Social "sciences" have been playing science for a long time, and still they don't have any universal laws or any deep understanding of what they're studying. I'm not saying data collection, interpolation and extrapolation (or as Rutherford put it, "stamp collecting") isn't a bad or useless thing. It just isn't science.
- James001 10y ago
  Social sciences haven't been "playing science", they are just as scientific as physics. It's just that physics produces more reliable knowledge via the scientific method, while the social sciences produce less reliable knowledge. The key point here is that science is not limited to the scientific method. The scientific method just produces more reliable knowledge, but is not the be all end all of science, it's just a limited subset, just like the "hard" sciences are a limited subset of science
  - tagrun 10y ago
    > Social sciences haven't been "playing science", they are just as scientific as physics. This sound a lot like trolling, but I'll bite for this once. You can't have less/more reliable knowledge. Science can't be half-wrong and half-right. You're either right or you're wrong. Your theory can't be vague and non-falsifiable. And you have to get a lot more than what you put into your theory. Regardless of how much you want to call it science, that is just pseudoscience. I personally really don't want to be associated with such "scientists". Which is why I think twice using the word science/scientist and tend to use the word physics/physicists. All thanks to scientists who are able to think out-of-the-box, unlike the narrow-minded stupid physicists who don't know anything but scientific method!
scythe 10y ago
>I disagree. I'm glad that science is becoming less associated with the "hard" sciences and is being used more broadly. But what do you mean "used"? In politics, the term "science" is extremely potent. Claiming that science is on your side is commonly done to dramatic effect in order to sway opinions. This effect is very useful in those cases where science tells us something irrefutably important, such as the future of the temperature of Earth's atmosphere or the effectiveness of medical interventions. But it's also very abusable when the standard of proof is relaxed, since it becomes easy to use defeasible reasoning to produce "science" which supports someone's ideology with the borrowed charisma of the physics department. And now, my favorite example: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/06/are_certain_behaviors--_and_jo.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/06/are_certain_behaviors...

LoSboccacc 10y ago

That's the definition for science and doing resesrch. This line of reasoning brought us Theranos and http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248 http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f... So no science as a field should remain well defined in scope and meaning, in the same way crafting shouldn't be blurred with engineering.

douche 10y ago
Science without the scientific method takes us back to alchemy, or astrology, or numerology. Those precursors eventually refined their methods and developed into sciences, but were not sciences. Most of the "soft" sciences appear to be closer to those protosciences, particularly when so much of the crackpot, discredited theories still circulate in the zeitgeist the way they do, as in, say psychology.
James001 10y ago
Right, so long as we can agree that science is not limited to the scientific method. Science should be well defined, but not limited to arbitrary confines.
- tagrun 10y ago
  Science is well defined. Oh, so when science is defined in the way Popper defines it, it is "arbitrary confines", but when it is defined in a way to legitimize cargo cult science, it is "well defined".
  - James001 10y ago
    Arbitrary confines of science is when you limit science to the scientific method. Well-defined science is frankly an insult to science
    - tagrun 10y ago
      > Science should be well defined, but not limited to arbitrary confines. > Well-defined science is frankly an insult to science. Spoken like a true pseudoscientist. Yes, it should be an insult, right? How dare they can expect a scientist to use scientific method for all their results? I mean, it sounds totally crazy, insulting! And more importantly, how are we gonna publish papers or get grants then?
      - James001 10y ago
        Strawmen for days! Just answer me this: Do you believe that the science is purely limited to the scientific method? Just riddle me that and I'll be content. Just keep in mind that you'll be outing yourself as scientifically illiterate.

beloch 10y ago

If you go to most universities, psychology is a part of the faculty of Humanities, not science. There's a reason for that. To call a discipline a science, it needs to use the scientific method, not just sometimes, but always. It needs testable hypotheses. Psychology sometimes has this, but often it does not. There is certainly reason for non-science fields to use scientific methods at times, but that doesn't necessarily mean those fields should be called sciences. An illustrative example is the difference between "medicine" and "medical science". Your doctor has studied medicine. He or she, in addition to studying some medical science, has learned interview techniques, psychology, and various other aspects of a craft that are, in no way, scientific. If you talk to a doctor in a non-medical setting (many are specifically trained not to reveal ignorance to patients in order to maintain patient confidence), you'll find they're remarkably ignorant about the how's or why's of the human body, except when it comes to something they've been trained to spot and fix. A huge portion of their training centers on knowing when to do nothing at all, because medical intervention almost always carries it's own risks. In his or her daily job, your doctor does not employ the scientific method. At least, you should probably hope you are not being experimented on by your family physician! Some doctors do research in the field of "medical science", but this really is an entirely different job from being a family physician, surgeon, etc.. Medicine is a highly skilled craft that sometimes uses science, but it is not itself a science.

James001 10y ago
Actually psychology is a part of the sciences in most universities, atleast in Canada. There's a reason for that too, I'm sure. Also, your assertion that to call a discipline a science, it needs to use the scientific method, is well... demonstrably false, simply by virtue of the fact that we are having this debate. The scientific method produces very reliable knowledge, but it is not the only way to produce knowledge that is reliable. There is also knowledge that we rely on that is not as rock solid as knowledge obtained from the scientific method, but which is still valuable and still falls under the realm of science, because it is still part of the systematic pursuit of progressively more reliable knowledge.
- tagrun 10y ago

tagrun 10y ago

This is exactly what's wrong with those "sciences": you can't do things scientifically (meaning the way "natural" scientists do) when it works for you and do something else when things start to get hairy, and call it science at the end of the day, because "there's more to it than scientific method" or because unicorns and dragons. That's the "fooling yourself" Feynman talks about. And no, it's not just that majority of psychology results are "not easily reproducible". Furthermore, again, science isn't just data fitting and extrapolation. A real theory gives you a lot more than what you put into it, including novel phenomena. Social "sciences" have been playing science for a long time, and still they don't have any universal laws or any deep understanding of what they're studying. I'm not saying data collection, interpolation and extrapolation (or as Rutherford put it, "stamp collecting") isn't a bad or useless thing. It just isn't science.

James001 10y ago
Social sciences haven't been "playing science", they are just as scientific as physics. It's just that physics produces more reliable knowledge via the scientific method, while the social sciences produce less reliable knowledge. The key point here is that science is not limited to the scientific method. The scientific method just produces more reliable knowledge, but is not the be all end all of science, it's just a limited subset, just like the "hard" sciences are a limited subset of science
- tagrun 10y ago
  > Social sciences haven't been "playing science", they are just as scientific as physics. This sound a lot like trolling, but I'll bite for this once. You can't have less/more reliable knowledge. Science can't be half-wrong and half-right. You're either right or you're wrong. Your theory can't be vague and non-falsifiable. And you have to get a lot more than what you put into your theory. Regardless of how much you want to call it science, that is just pseudoscience. I personally really don't want to be associated with such "scientists". Which is why I think twice using the word science/scientist and tend to use the word physics/physicists. All thanks to scientists who are able to think out-of-the-box, unlike the narrow-minded stupid physicists who don't know anything but scientific method!

scythe 10y ago

>I disagree. I'm glad that science is becoming less associated with the "hard" sciences and is being used more broadly. But what do you mean "used"? In politics, the term "science" is extremely potent. Claiming that science is on your side is commonly done to dramatic effect in order to sway opinions. This effect is very useful in those cases where science tells us something irrefutably important, such as the future of the temperature of Earth's atmosphere or the effectiveness of medical interventions. But it's also very abusable when the standard of proof is relaxed, since it becomes easy to use defeasible reasoning to produce "science" which supports someone's ideology with the borrowed charisma of the physics department. And now, my favorite example: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/06/are_certain_behaviors--_and_jo.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/06/are_certain_behaviors...