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Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn

by trendia 10y ago

Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. For example, I purchased the Kindle version of the book the author recommends ("Coming Up Short"). I turned to the appendix, where the author describes her research methodology. And sure enough, the research involves open-ended questions ("Walk me through a typical day at work." "Is there a time you lost a job? Could you describe it?") that could lead the interviewee to respond in any way they want. There are many problems with this, such as : 1) the interviewee may inadvertently invent convenient narratives that provide comfort but aren't accurate, 2) the interviewer may mis-interpret the answers, etc. How are we supposed to develop policy off of this? Sure, it's a great starting point for starting research, but the narrative- or story-based approach should never be the conclusion. This is why economics is so much more trusted. Although economics has flaws, and the study of econometrics can sometimes lead to incorrect conclusions, it at least uses objective data and metrics, which are less susceptible to error, providing a much more grounded approach to policy decisions.

matt4077 10y ago
By "rigor" you mean "math". But economics itself is the best proof that math can be used to cargo-cult your opinions to fame and fortune. While there are some attempts with evidence-based policy, these sciences just aren't really at the point where math is useful (yet). Math mostly requires reducibility: the ability to split it into small parts and look at these individually. That approach worked incredibly well in physics, and with the Manhattan project at the latest, it proved that it was mightier than any human endeavour before it. But while, theoretically, everything could be reduced to physics, that isn't always the level of abstraction that works best. If you're depressed, a physicist isn't going to help you. Medicine may – but a psychologist, even though the discipline is scientifically flawed - is still an important tool in the set available to us. Sociology is psychology on a population-scale. In that regard, it may be almost impossible to reduce because of nonlinear effects, chaos etc. That severely limits applying results from prior experiment X,Y,Z to situation B – because what you usually do is split situation B into components (B1=X,B2=Y,B3=Z,...), each of which is quite generic and has been studied in detail. So you'd have to run your own experiment on B, and the questions of sociology would require you to run an A/B experiment, with both A and B being, for example, New York.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  You seem to be claiming that the results of sociology cannot be predictive, only descriptive. If so, that makes sociology completely useless for policy. A field which cannot predict what will happen next time can't actually inform a policy maker as to whether their policy is useful. Math mostly requires reducibility: the ability to split it into small parts and look at these individually. This is simply false. If this is your criticism of math in economics, it applies equally well to math in geophysics, oceanography, climate science, etc.
  - 1337biz 10y ago
    My fav quote on that: "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." (Peter Drucker)
  - devinhelton 10y ago
    The better critique is that math requires homogenous data points. In sociology, every policy implementation is different in a million ways. A welfare program in Sweden is different than one in Chicago. The charter school program in Boston are different than those in Detroit. So doing statistical studies on a question like "do charter schools work" that treats all these implementations as identical, is often not very useful for actually learning something about policy.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      The better critique is that math requires homogenous data points. This critique is similarly wrong. There's a field called "machine learning" - you might have heard of it - which often uses inhomogeneous data points. So doing statistical studies on a question like "do charter schools work" that treats all these implementations as identical, is often not very useful for actually learning something about policy. So instead build a model that understands the important factors which make charter schools work/fail. Then use it. If you can't do this, don't pretend you have anything to say about whether I should implement charter schools.
  - 10y ago
cjustice 10y ago
Modern Western society seems to associate quantitative research with "rigor", and to believe that it is more objective than qualitative studies. Rather than take this approach, I believe it would be more worthwhile to say that all research will be influenced by the author's societal positioning. For example, consider how economists choose what metrics to use in their experiments. It seems to me impossible to say that those choices could ever be unbiased, free of influence by external forces.
jahaja 10y ago
I think you're giving economics the benefit of the doubt while having a critical eye towards sociology when they're not much different in regards to objectivity and being "soft" sciences. In fact I'm not sure sociology would still have its credibility intact if it were to have as many failures as economics have had just the latest 20 years or so. Somehow economics manages this, which leads me to the next point. I'm surprised that you're speaking with such certainty without mentioning the rather powerful relationship between economics and finance in a classical "follow the money" trail of thought.
- trendia 10y ago
  > relationship between economics and finance in a classical "follow the money" trail of thought. What specifically are you claiming?
  - jahaja 10y ago
    That the study of economics has a strong connection to both capital and power while sociology is more academic/institutional and thus less influential.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      This. In spades. J.K. Galbraith (an economist himself) has claimed largely the same himself, and he's hardly the only one (within the field). (Update) Some examples: https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/ https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/
    - trendia 10y ago
      Except for Stiglitz, Borjas, Piketty, etc.
    - sdenton4 10y ago
      True dat. Economics has a number of reformers, in endless battle with an elite who make their names and fortunes by telling power what it wants to hear (and dressing it up with shamanistic differential equations to give the appearance of credibility).
RobertoG 10y ago
"Although economics has flaws [..]" That would be the understatement of the century. Economics theory decide how to organize society resources, so, it's a very loaded subject with a lot of interests trying to decide what is "reality". Economics use complicated maths to justify ideologically determined policy. I propose you a simple exercise. Go to any mainstream economic textbook and read about the fractional reserve system creation of money, that it's supposedly how the system works. Then go and read what the people that are really in charge say about how money is created (pdf from the Bank of England): http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte... If the textbooks in economics are wrong about a basic thing like that, maybe we should start to think carefully about the subject.
- gozur88 10y ago
  >That would be the understatement of the century. Indeed. If it weren't for nutritionists, economists would win the prize for having the discipline most disconnected from reality.
  - jschwartzi 10y ago
    If you read a basic 100-level nutrition textbook, I guarantee you that you'll recant your statement. The problem isn't that the disciplines are disconnected from reality, but that people are treating bleeding-edge research as if it's scientific fact, rather than taking it all with a grain of salt as you would do in another scientific discipline.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      What makes you think I haven't read such a textbook? The problem is the insights in economics are either obvious or dubious, save Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. Which, I should add, doesn't seem to hold up in practice either.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  The creation of money is actually among the more sensible elements of economics, though fractional reserve lending may not be the best route to doing that (I'm not sure that it is or isn't, though I'm pretty certain it's not the bugbear people claim it is). I'd look at economic definitions of cost, value, and price, of ignoring the reality of thermodynamics, and of much of the theology (Thorstein Veblen uses the term "mythology") surrounding supposedly rationally-acting "homo economicus", market failures, and the role of information, amongst many others. Money is first and principally a mechanism for exchange, and gumming up that role leads to problems. Fractional-reserve and central banking greatly assists in this, and is by and large hugely useful.
crdoconnor 10y ago
"Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?"" It needs to generate 'useful' political recommendations (useful to the 'right' people). "The answer would be rigor." No it absolutely would not. The economics profession has been actively resisting rigor. For instance, Neoclassical (still the default in policy circles) still considers private debt to have no significant macroeconomic effect and presumes, religiously, that markets trend towards equilibrium (particularly in employment). "This is why economics is so much more trusted." It shouldn't be. "it at least uses objective data" Would you have any faith in a model rooted in Newtonian mechanics that assumed away friction just because "it at least uses objective data"?
- raphlinus 10y ago
  The use of math in economics is much like the use of Newtonian mechanics to understand elementary particle interactions at the horizons of black holes.
tasty_freeze 10y ago
Look how much influence the Laffer Curve has had on economic policy, when in fact it is a pretty boring observation that taxation at a rate of 0% produces no income for the government, and taxation at a rate of 100% produces no income for the government (because of the lack of incentive to work), therefore the optimum is somewhere between those two points. That broad idea was enough to argue that the highest tax rates were way too high and had to be cut substantially.
- MagnumOpus 10y ago
  And that is a good example of the disconnect between economics as a social science and politicians instrumentalising some sound bites from economics profs and selling it as "what the economists tell us". There are numerous economics papers studying exactly what is the shape of the Laffer curve both from historical analysis as well as trying to find natural experiments. (IIRC tax revenue peaks at 50-65% tax rates, at least in the short run.) None of the politicians actually know or care about the results of these studies - as long as the sound bite is convenient as a rhetoric device to support their ideology (cutting taxes or raising taxes or whatever, it gets trotted out by politicians. Sadly, ex-economists who definitely do know better are instrumental in this as well. People like Krugman, Mankiw or indeed Laffer got a large audience based on genuine rigorous contributions from 10 or 20 years ago - and then promptly ignore all that rigor, uncertainty and intellectual honesty when they get the offer of a $10million/year payday and a chance to mold the world according to their ideology from politicians and media. It is the same thing with international trade, it is the same thing with state-vs-private ownership and natural monopolies, it is the same thing with costs/benefits of demographic change and migration.
ipsin 10y ago
It seems pretty clear that you don't like qualitative sociology, but do you have a problem with the rigor of quantitative sociology, as it is currently practiced?
yxwvut 10y ago
Reading the replies you're getting, it seems the average HN commenter: A. Has never read an economics research paper B. Only know economics as monetary policy (or macro more broadly), and as a libertarian is inherently skeptical. Currently, most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro, so the knee jerk libertarian "economics is broken" meme doesn't hold much water as the topics and methods are pretty dissimilar. A developmental microeconomics field study in rural India is a different beast entirely from a macro theory paper. For a sample of the diversity of economics research, see here: http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/ http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/ Returning to your comment, the issue of storytelling, in a nutshell, was what drove me crazy when working closely with qualitative sociologists. Trying to discuss falsifiability in their study design was maddening. Sociology doesn't need to adopt the same research model as applied economics but they do need a serious look at their research methods, and I have more respect for those who try to take a quantitative approach. Many of the sociologists I worked with would turn up their noses at the phrase "computational social science" and were loathe to discuss issues like biased sampling, but the best ones (IMO) used qualitative observations to drive later large-scale quantitative study, which I think should be the de-facto standard for social science research. Their reliance on ethnographic studies can be useful for verifying the existence of some phenomenon you have a hunch exists in some form, but such research is woefully biased and wholly inadequate as a means of measuring the prevalence or magnitude of a phenomenon, which is why economics studies (or quantitative methods more broadly) tend to have more credence when presenting evidence on the same subjects.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  "most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro" I'm not sure why that save economics from the discussion, when it's the theoretical macro what have a huge influence in the life of billions of persons and the title of the article we are discussing is "If Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists". The libertarian comment is uncalled for, as most of the comments here don't express a political view, only criticism of the discipline.
  - yxwvut 10y ago
ajb 10y ago
You say sociological methodology leads the researcher to project their own biases onto the data, but the method you criticise- open questions - is precisely designed to avoid this. The sociological methodology most focussed on avoiding researcher bias is Grounded Theory[1]. It follows the collection of data via open-ended questions and interviews with further techniques to analyse this unstructured data in a way that avoids introducing preconceived ideas from the researcher (coding, etc). The problem with pointing to qualitative techniques as more rigorous and less biassed, is that the bias - when it comes to data about people- often lies in the decision what to measure - especially when categorising - and how to interpret the numerical result when you have (rigorously) processed it. That is as susceptible to preconceptions of the researcher. It's just easier for an economist to hide behind the rigour applied to the quantitative part. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory
- TheGRS 10y ago
  Agreed, yes/no questions can often be leading and may come to totally inaccurate conclusions. With open-ended questions you may get a rich answer with a lot of bias, but at least the answer is rich and you can sift through the data gathered. Its just not nearly as efficient as a "rate on a scale of 1-10" or "yes or no" questionnaire. But the devil is always in the details.
jccalhoun 10y ago
As someone who got minored in Anthropology in my phd program, I like qualitative because it is descriptive. Quantitative work are best at telling us what answers people gave or a numerical summary of what people did. It can't tell us why people gave that answer or why they did what they did.
- weberc2 10y ago
  Unfortunately, we can't even trust this qualitative work, because it is produced by an ideologically homogeneous body. It's not possible to remove the confirmation bias. These departments often seem more like clergy than scientists.
mathattack 10y ago
Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. This is exactly it. They can't prove what they know, or make good predictions. When you insert yourself into the story, you can't shake confirmation bias. Economics is still shaky science, but the economists at least try to get on stronger fundamental footing.
aphextron 10y ago
>The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. This is the exact problem, yet it is hard to get someone in the social sciences to admit it in my experience. For instance, I am a computer science student, and I'm currently taking a political science class as part of my university requirements. A recent exam question was worded in multiple choice format, to the effect that the professor was seeking an exact specific answer to a completely subjective question, such as "What is the most important issue facing China as it's population continues to grow?". It's completely absurd, and you end up with an exam full of questions with one "correct" answer, and a bunch of nonsensical gibberish for the other options. This lack of imprecision drives me absolutely mad. I understand that social sciences are inherently dealing with subject matter that is harder to quantify than, say, computer science. But the issue is when one asserts that scientific conclusions can be made about these subjects when no formal system of reasoning exists. To quote from a recent article I read, "Until we have a deep understanding of the brain, we can't shape falsifiable, general theories about it, and mind studies cannot provide a reliable understanding of the brain. In short, no theory, no falsifiability, no science." http://arachnoid.com/psychology_and_alchemy/ http://arachnoid.com/psychology_and_alchemy/ In short, if social scientists simply accepted that their fields do not fit the traditional rigors of science, it would do much to alleviate the issue. Studying these things can still provide valuable, actionable insight. But to treat it on par with the natural sciences is fraudulent.
- vacri 10y ago
  > But to treat it on par with the natural sciences is fraudulent. ... because economics is a natural science?
khawkins 10y ago
In addition, sociology as a practice seems to tie itself deeply to activism. When it does so, the credibility of sociology as a scientific pursuit weakens. Compare, for example, at Colombia University, the Department of Sociology homepage http://sociology.columbia.edu/ http://sociology.columbia.edu/ and the Department of Economoics http://econ.columbia.edu/ http://econ.columbia.edu/. The sociology page features a huge image of a protest of the recent immigration executive orders. The economics page, on the other hand, features upcoming talks like "Iceland's Road to Recovery" and "Modern Financial Markets: The Role of High-Frequency Trading". The sociology department is signaling that they're passionate about ideological issues, while the economics department is signaling that they're focused on understanding and analyzing. People trust scientists because people believe they are willing and able to divorce their emotions and vested interests from an objective pursuit of the truth. Sociology seems to fail that test time after time.
- RodericDay 10y ago
  > Compare, for example, at Colombia University, the Department of Sociology homepage http://sociology.columbia.edu/ http://sociology.columbia.edu/ and the Department of Economoics http://econ.columbia.edu/ http://econ.columbia.edu/. The sociology page features a huge image of a protest of the recent immigration executive orders. The economics page, on the other hand, features upcoming talks like "Iceland's Road to Recovery" and "Modern Financial Markets: The Role of High-Frequency Trading". The sociology department is signaling that they're passionate about ideological issues, while the economics department is signaling that they're focused on understanding and analyzing. How can you conjure up this example, and conclude that only sociology is ideological?
  - barry-cotter 10y ago
    > How can you conjure up this example, and conclude that only sociology is ideological? Would it be better if he had said that the Economics department seems to aspire to centrist technocracy and the Sociology department varies from left wing to far left?
    - 10y ago
vacri 10y ago
> The answer would be rigor. Nonsense. Back to the original question, the reason why economics has influence is because it involves money. The people who hold the purse strings talk in that language, and those people always pay themselves first. Sociology could have perfect rigor, beyond that of any other disciple, but it would never have the influence of economics.
RodericDay 10y ago
> Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" Become obsequious towards those in power? Find out rationalizations for our current state of affairs? Come up with reasons why we live in the best of all possible worlds? Joan Robinson once put it pretty concisely, "The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."
sfifs 10y ago
In marketing research, the normal approach tends to use sociology type research to generate hypothesis and ideas which you then either test quantitatively with rigor or through in market testing. Sometimes, if the narrative research is convincing enough, you might directly skip to an in market test execution.
ucaetano 10y ago
"The answer would be rigor." It reminds me of the often-cited Stanford Prison Experiment. The lack of any rigor during the experiment is usually ignored when the findings are discussed. The "experiment" had no control group, or even a separation between the observers and the ones involved in the experiment (Zimbardo was both the prison chief and the lead researcher). From an experimental setup point of view, it was just an amateurish mess.
icelancer 10y ago
The number of responses to this post broadly implicating macroeconomics as psuedoscience are pounding nails into their own coffins considering macroeconomics and the applications of the study tend to be sociological in nature. There's no psuedoscience behind microeconomic analysis of market interactions at the lower levels; they very well model how markets, businesses, exchanges of value, etc operate.
- the_why_of_y 10y ago
  Some practically useless models of macroeconomics (Real Business Cycle theory) pride themselves in being fully "microfounded", i.e., being based only on the basic assumptions of microeconomics. The uselessness is then demonstrated by proclamations that the doubling of the unemployment rate in the recent financial crisis is caused by 10s of millions of workers suddenly developing a preference for leisure over work.
MR4D 10y ago
There are many people who would disagree with your thoughts on economists being rigorous - at least about data that is relevant. For instance, this article ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/390063/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article... ). This joke probably sums up what many people think of economists: Q: Why did God create economists? A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.

by trendia 10y ago

matt4077 10y ago

By "rigor" you mean "math". But economics itself is the best proof that math can be used to cargo-cult your opinions to fame and fortune. While there are some attempts with evidence-based policy, these sciences just aren't really at the point where math is useful (yet). Math mostly requires reducibility: the ability to split it into small parts and look at these individually. That approach worked incredibly well in physics, and with the Manhattan project at the latest, it proved that it was mightier than any human endeavour before it. But while, theoretically, everything could be reduced to physics, that isn't always the level of abstraction that works best. If you're depressed, a physicist isn't going to help you. Medicine may – but a psychologist, even though the discipline is scientifically flawed - is still an important tool in the set available to us. Sociology is psychology on a population-scale. In that regard, it may be almost impossible to reduce because of nonlinear effects, chaos etc. That severely limits applying results from prior experiment X,Y,Z to situation B – because what you usually do is split situation B into components (B1=X,B2=Y,B3=Z,...), each of which is quite generic and has been studied in detail. So you'd have to run your own experiment on B, and the questions of sociology would require you to run an A/B experiment, with both A and B being, for example, New York.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
You seem to be claiming that the results of sociology cannot be predictive, only descriptive. If so, that makes sociology completely useless for policy. A field which cannot predict what will happen next time can't actually inform a policy maker as to whether their policy is useful. Math mostly requires reducibility: the ability to split it into small parts and look at these individually. This is simply false. If this is your criticism of math in economics, it applies equally well to math in geophysics, oceanography, climate science, etc.
- 1337biz 10y ago
  My fav quote on that: "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." (Peter Drucker)
- devinhelton 10y ago
  The better critique is that math requires homogenous data points. In sociology, every policy implementation is different in a million ways. A welfare program in Sweden is different than one in Chicago. The charter school program in Boston are different than those in Detroit. So doing statistical studies on a question like "do charter schools work" that treats all these implementations as identical, is often not very useful for actually learning something about policy.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    The better critique is that math requires homogenous data points. This critique is similarly wrong. There's a field called "machine learning" - you might have heard of it - which often uses inhomogeneous data points. So doing statistical studies on a question like "do charter schools work" that treats all these implementations as identical, is often not very useful for actually learning something about policy. So instead build a model that understands the important factors which make charter schools work/fail. Then use it. If you can't do this, don't pretend you have anything to say about whether I should implement charter schools.
- 10y ago

cjustice 10y ago

Modern Western society seems to associate quantitative research with "rigor", and to believe that it is more objective than qualitative studies. Rather than take this approach, I believe it would be more worthwhile to say that all research will be influenced by the author's societal positioning. For example, consider how economists choose what metrics to use in their experiments. It seems to me impossible to say that those choices could ever be unbiased, free of influence by external forces.

jahaja 10y ago

I think you're giving economics the benefit of the doubt while having a critical eye towards sociology when they're not much different in regards to objectivity and being "soft" sciences. In fact I'm not sure sociology would still have its credibility intact if it were to have as many failures as economics have had just the latest 20 years or so. Somehow economics manages this, which leads me to the next point. I'm surprised that you're speaking with such certainty without mentioning the rather powerful relationship between economics and finance in a classical "follow the money" trail of thought.

trendia 10y ago
> relationship between economics and finance in a classical "follow the money" trail of thought. What specifically are you claiming?
- jahaja 10y ago
  That the study of economics has a strong connection to both capital and power while sociology is more academic/institutional and thus less influential.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    This. In spades. J.K. Galbraith (an economist himself) has claimed largely the same himself, and he's hardly the only one (within the field). (Update) Some examples: https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/ https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/tag/economists/
  - trendia 10y ago
    Except for Stiglitz, Borjas, Piketty, etc.
  - sdenton4 10y ago
    True dat. Economics has a number of reformers, in endless battle with an elite who make their names and fortunes by telling power what it wants to hear (and dressing it up with shamanistic differential equations to give the appearance of credibility).

RobertoG 10y ago

"Although economics has flaws [..]" That would be the understatement of the century. Economics theory decide how to organize society resources, so, it's a very loaded subject with a lot of interests trying to decide what is "reality". Economics use complicated maths to justify ideologically determined policy. I propose you a simple exercise. Go to any mainstream economic textbook and read about the fractional reserve system creation of money, that it's supposedly how the system works. Then go and read what the people that are really in charge say about how money is created (pdf from the Bank of England): http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarte... If the textbooks in economics are wrong about a basic thing like that, maybe we should start to think carefully about the subject.

gozur88 10y ago
>That would be the understatement of the century. Indeed. If it weren't for nutritionists, economists would win the prize for having the discipline most disconnected from reality.
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  If you read a basic 100-level nutrition textbook, I guarantee you that you'll recant your statement. The problem isn't that the disciplines are disconnected from reality, but that people are treating bleeding-edge research as if it's scientific fact, rather than taking it all with a grain of salt as you would do in another scientific discipline.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    What makes you think I haven't read such a textbook? The problem is the insights in economics are either obvious or dubious, save Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage. Which, I should add, doesn't seem to hold up in practice either.
dredmorbius 10y ago
The creation of money is actually among the more sensible elements of economics, though fractional reserve lending may not be the best route to doing that (I'm not sure that it is or isn't, though I'm pretty certain it's not the bugbear people claim it is). I'd look at economic definitions of cost, value, and price, of ignoring the reality of thermodynamics, and of much of the theology (Thorstein Veblen uses the term "mythology") surrounding supposedly rationally-acting "homo economicus", market failures, and the role of information, amongst many others. Money is first and principally a mechanism for exchange, and gumming up that role leads to problems. Fractional-reserve and central banking greatly assists in this, and is by and large hugely useful.

crdoconnor 10y ago

"Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?"" It needs to generate 'useful' political recommendations (useful to the 'right' people). "The answer would be rigor." No it absolutely would not. The economics profession has been actively resisting rigor. For instance, Neoclassical (still the default in policy circles) still considers private debt to have no significant macroeconomic effect and presumes, religiously, that markets trend towards equilibrium (particularly in employment). "This is why economics is so much more trusted." It shouldn't be. "it at least uses objective data" Would you have any faith in a model rooted in Newtonian mechanics that assumed away friction just because "it at least uses objective data"?

raphlinus 10y ago
The use of math in economics is much like the use of Newtonian mechanics to understand elementary particle interactions at the horizons of black holes.

tasty_freeze 10y ago

Look how much influence the Laffer Curve has had on economic policy, when in fact it is a pretty boring observation that taxation at a rate of 0% produces no income for the government, and taxation at a rate of 100% produces no income for the government (because of the lack of incentive to work), therefore the optimum is somewhere between those two points. That broad idea was enough to argue that the highest tax rates were way too high and had to be cut substantially.

MagnumOpus 10y ago
And that is a good example of the disconnect between economics as a social science and politicians instrumentalising some sound bites from economics profs and selling it as "what the economists tell us". There are numerous economics papers studying exactly what is the shape of the Laffer curve both from historical analysis as well as trying to find natural experiments. (IIRC tax revenue peaks at 50-65% tax rates, at least in the short run.) None of the politicians actually know or care about the results of these studies - as long as the sound bite is convenient as a rhetoric device to support their ideology (cutting taxes or raising taxes or whatever, it gets trotted out by politicians. Sadly, ex-economists who definitely do know better are instrumental in this as well. People like Krugman, Mankiw or indeed Laffer got a large audience based on genuine rigorous contributions from 10 or 20 years ago - and then promptly ignore all that rigor, uncertainty and intellectual honesty when they get the offer of a $10million/year payday and a chance to mold the world according to their ideology from politicians and media. It is the same thing with international trade, it is the same thing with state-vs-private ownership and natural monopolies, it is the same thing with costs/benefits of demographic change and migration.

ipsin 10y ago

It seems pretty clear that you don't like qualitative sociology, but do you have a problem with the rigor of quantitative sociology, as it is currently practiced?

yxwvut 10y ago

Reading the replies you're getting, it seems the average HN commenter: A. Has never read an economics research paper B. Only know economics as monetary policy (or macro more broadly), and as a libertarian is inherently skeptical. Currently, most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro, so the knee jerk libertarian "economics is broken" meme doesn't hold much water as the topics and methods are pretty dissimilar. A developmental microeconomics field study in rural India is a different beast entirely from a macro theory paper. For a sample of the diversity of economics research, see here: http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/ http://www.nber.org/papersbyprog/ Returning to your comment, the issue of storytelling, in a nutshell, was what drove me crazy when working closely with qualitative sociologists. Trying to discuss falsifiability in their study design was maddening. Sociology doesn't need to adopt the same research model as applied economics but they do need a serious look at their research methods, and I have more respect for those who try to take a quantitative approach. Many of the sociologists I worked with would turn up their noses at the phrase "computational social science" and were loathe to discuss issues like biased sampling, but the best ones (IMO) used qualitative observations to drive later large-scale quantitative study, which I think should be the de-facto standard for social science research. Their reliance on ethnographic studies can be useful for verifying the existence of some phenomenon you have a hunch exists in some form, but such research is woefully biased and wholly inadequate as a means of measuring the prevalence or magnitude of a phenomenon, which is why economics studies (or quantitative methods more broadly) tend to have more credence when presenting evidence on the same subjects.

RobertoG 10y ago
"most of the interesting research being done in econ is outside of theoretical macro" I'm not sure why that save economics from the discussion, when it's the theoretical macro what have a huge influence in the life of billions of persons and the title of the article we are discussing is "If Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists". The libertarian comment is uncalled for, as most of the comments here don't express a political view, only criticism of the discipline.
- yxwvut 10y ago

ajb 10y ago

You say sociological methodology leads the researcher to project their own biases onto the data, but the method you criticise- open questions - is precisely designed to avoid this. The sociological methodology most focussed on avoiding researcher bias is Grounded Theory[1]. It follows the collection of data via open-ended questions and interviews with further techniques to analyse this unstructured data in a way that avoids introducing preconceived ideas from the researcher (coding, etc). The problem with pointing to qualitative techniques as more rigorous and less biassed, is that the bias - when it comes to data about people- often lies in the decision what to measure - especially when categorising - and how to interpret the numerical result when you have (rigorously) processed it. That is as susceptible to preconceptions of the researcher. It's just easier for an economist to hide behind the rigour applied to the quantitative part. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grounded_theory

TheGRS 10y ago
Agreed, yes/no questions can often be leading and may come to totally inaccurate conclusions. With open-ended questions you may get a rich answer with a lot of bias, but at least the answer is rich and you can sift through the data gathered. Its just not nearly as efficient as a "rate on a scale of 1-10" or "yes or no" questionnaire. But the devil is always in the details.

jccalhoun 10y ago

As someone who got minored in Anthropology in my phd program, I like qualitative because it is descriptive. Quantitative work are best at telling us what answers people gave or a numerical summary of what people did. It can't tell us why people gave that answer or why they did what they did.

weberc2 10y ago
Unfortunately, we can't even trust this qualitative work, because it is produced by an ideologically homogeneous body. It's not possible to remove the confirmation bias. These departments often seem more like clergy than scientists.

mathattack 10y ago

aphextron 10y ago

>The answer would be rigor. A huge problem with sociology is the dependence on the story. Unfortunately, since the sociologist is often a human with their own biases, they are going to see what they want to see. This is the exact problem, yet it is hard to get someone in the social sciences to admit it in my experience. For instance, I am a computer science student, and I'm currently taking a political science class as part of my university requirements. A recent exam question was worded in multiple choice format, to the effect that the professor was seeking an exact specific answer to a completely subjective question, such as "What is the most important issue facing China as it's population continues to grow?". It's completely absurd, and you end up with an exam full of questions with one "correct" answer, and a bunch of nonsensical gibberish for the other options. This lack of imprecision drives me absolutely mad. I understand that social sciences are inherently dealing with subject matter that is harder to quantify than, say, computer science. But the issue is when one asserts that scientific conclusions can be made about these subjects when no formal system of reasoning exists. To quote from a recent article I read, "Until we have a deep understanding of the brain, we can't shape falsifiable, general theories about it, and mind studies cannot provide a reliable understanding of the brain. In short, no theory, no falsifiability, no science." http://arachnoid.com/psychology_and_alchemy/ http://arachnoid.com/psychology_and_alchemy/ In short, if social scientists simply accepted that their fields do not fit the traditional rigors of science, it would do much to alleviate the issue. Studying these things can still provide valuable, actionable insight. But to treat it on par with the natural sciences is fraudulent.

vacri 10y ago
> But to treat it on par with the natural sciences is fraudulent. ... because economics is a natural science?

khawkins 10y ago

In addition, sociology as a practice seems to tie itself deeply to activism. When it does so, the credibility of sociology as a scientific pursuit weakens. Compare, for example, at Colombia University, the Department of Sociology homepage http://sociology.columbia.edu/ http://sociology.columbia.edu/ and the Department of Economoics http://econ.columbia.edu/ http://econ.columbia.edu/. The sociology page features a huge image of a protest of the recent immigration executive orders. The economics page, on the other hand, features upcoming talks like "Iceland's Road to Recovery" and "Modern Financial Markets: The Role of High-Frequency Trading". The sociology department is signaling that they're passionate about ideological issues, while the economics department is signaling that they're focused on understanding and analyzing. People trust scientists because people believe they are willing and able to divorce their emotions and vested interests from an objective pursuit of the truth. Sociology seems to fail that test time after time.

RodericDay 10y ago
> Compare, for example, at Colombia University, the Department of Sociology homepage http://sociology.columbia.edu/ http://sociology.columbia.edu/ and the Department of Economoics http://econ.columbia.edu/ http://econ.columbia.edu/. The sociology page features a huge image of a protest of the recent immigration executive orders. The economics page, on the other hand, features upcoming talks like "Iceland's Road to Recovery" and "Modern Financial Markets: The Role of High-Frequency Trading". The sociology department is signaling that they're passionate about ideological issues, while the economics department is signaling that they're focused on understanding and analyzing. How can you conjure up this example, and conclude that only sociology is ideological?
- barry-cotter 10y ago
  > How can you conjure up this example, and conclude that only sociology is ideological? Would it be better if he had said that the Economics department seems to aspire to centrist technocracy and the Sociology department varies from left wing to far left?
  - 10y ago

vacri 10y ago

> The answer would be rigor. Nonsense. Back to the original question, the reason why economics has influence is because it involves money. The people who hold the purse strings talk in that language, and those people always pay themselves first. Sociology could have perfect rigor, beyond that of any other disciple, but it would never have the influence of economics.

RodericDay 10y ago

> Rather than ask the question, "What if sociologists had influence?", the author should ask, "What does sociology need to change as a discipline in order to earn influence?" Become obsequious towards those in power? Find out rationalizations for our current state of affairs? Come up with reasons why we live in the best of all possible worlds? Joan Robinson once put it pretty concisely, "The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists."

sfifs 10y ago

In marketing research, the normal approach tends to use sociology type research to generate hypothesis and ideas which you then either test quantitatively with rigor or through in market testing. Sometimes, if the narrative research is convincing enough, you might directly skip to an in market test execution.

ucaetano 10y ago

"The answer would be rigor." It reminds me of the often-cited Stanford Prison Experiment. The lack of any rigor during the experiment is usually ignored when the findings are discussed. The "experiment" had no control group, or even a separation between the observers and the ones involved in the experiment (Zimbardo was both the prison chief and the lead researcher). From an experimental setup point of view, it was just an amateurish mess.

icelancer 10y ago

The number of responses to this post broadly implicating macroeconomics as psuedoscience are pounding nails into their own coffins considering macroeconomics and the applications of the study tend to be sociological in nature. There's no psuedoscience behind microeconomic analysis of market interactions at the lower levels; they very well model how markets, businesses, exchanges of value, etc operate.

the_why_of_y 10y ago
Some practically useless models of macroeconomics (Real Business Cycle theory) pride themselves in being fully "microfounded", i.e., being based only on the basic assumptions of microeconomics. The uselessness is then demonstrated by proclamations that the doubling of the unemployment rate in the recent financial crisis is caused by 10s of millions of workers suddenly developing a preference for leisure over work.

MR4D 10y ago

There are many people who would disagree with your thoughts on economists being rigorous - at least about data that is relevant. For instance, this article ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/390063/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article... ). This joke probably sums up what many people think of economists: Q: Why did God create economists? A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.