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Whoever downvoted this: Downvoting should be for comments that are low quality or don't contribute to the conversation, not perfectly fine comments with which y

by endtime 10y ago

Whoever downvoted this: Downvoting should be for comments that are low quality or don't contribute to the conversation, not perfectly fine comments with which you disagree.

fwn 10y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with everything the parent wrote, nor did I downvote, but maybe "I don't think social science is a real science" is not the greatest starting point for making a genuinely social point. It's like saying "I don't think physics actually exists, but here's my take on gravity."
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Isn't that a pure opinion, of which you simply disagree? It is hardly a rare opinion at that. It's been a problem for the field since the start: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-social-science-an-oxymoron-will-that-ever-change/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-social-s... There's no contradiction between having views on social issues, and believing that people who call themselves social scientists maybe aren't following the scientific process as usually understood.
  - fwn 10y ago
    Oh, he was not saying that there are bad social scientists. This is a completely valid statement to make. However, calling a discipline unscientific is not a matter of taste or opinion. There are a bunch of scientific methods and as long as you stick with them, you are scientific. No matter how well received your results are. (This, by the way, holds also true for climate science.) There is a clear contradiction between calling social science unscientific and then relying on their concepts (trust, institutions, applied law, globalism, groupthink, etc.) in the very same argument. edit: I can not answer to anyone anymore since I'm "submitting too fast. Please slow down." Sorry.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      There is something to the argument that the inability to experiment limits scientific rigor.
      - NoGravitas 10y ago
        Yeah, but to a certain extent that's true of things that no one doubts are science. Evolutionary biology is limited by the fact that evolution is non-repeatable, for example. I used to be an archaeologist. Definitely a field where you can't experiment; you're studying the evidence left by the past. But good methodology in archaeology is making hypotheses about what you expect to find in a new excavation or an inadequately studied old collection, and then testing those hypotheses. Yes, there's a problem with controls, but that's not unique to social science.
        zigzigzag 10y ago
        Evolution has been proven experimentally, so I'm not sure why you're picking on that specifically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution Archaeology isn't a science either, even though I've studied it myself and ancient civilisations are a particular favourite area of study for me. Archaeologists and historians in general frequently do things that wouldn't match the usual understanding of the scientific process: that doesn't mean we shouldn't study history, but comparing the fields credibility to that of physics is really problematic. But to clarify, when I said "social science" I was referring to people who explicitly call themselves that. Archaeology and even psychology wouldn't count under that definition - but if someone actually says they are a professor of social science, to me that's an immediate red flag because the "research" produced by such people is in my experience usually just a complicated and expensive form of personal politics blogging. Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of good talks on this topic. There's a paper here: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-political-diversity/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-...
matt4077 10y ago
I downvoted it because spreading the myth that "mainstream media is lying" is both low-quality and dangerous, and is otherwise a litany of right-wing talking points that add nothing new to the discussion. I'll gladly reconsider if OP can give me a specific example of the New York Times knowingly publishing a statement of fact, in the last year, that turned out to be wrong.
- willholloway 10y ago
  What is really dangerous is the mainstream media (NY Times, Washington Post) running stories based solely on anonymous sources. The public has no capacity to vet the credibility of anonymously sourced claims. Almost all of the current media narrative on the Russian story comes from stories with nothing more than "American officials say". Remember that "American officials said" that Iraq definitely had WMD. Public support for the invasion was built solely on anonymously sourced news. American officials were actually politically motivated ideologues manufacturing consent, with journalists at the New York Times like Judith Wilson playing the part of the useful idiot. The same thing is happening right now. This [1] New York Times story is a perfect example. There is no place for anonymous sources on issues of war and peace in a republic. Allowing this low a bar for journalistic evidence leaves us completely vulnerable to manipulation. [1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nunes-intelligence-reports.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nune...
  - matt4077 10y ago
    The choice is not to get the same information but from known sources. In most cases, you won't get the information at all. And people misunderstand the mechanism here: journalists quoting unnamed sources put their own reputation on the line as a stand-in for their sources. They know the names, and they build relationships with these sources. The sources/treacherous illoyal leakers/whistleblowers are career politicians or officials, and their relationship with someone at the Journal or the Times is equally valuable for them. Looking at the current storyline on Russia, I know there are daily leaks from "unnamed sources". But I can't think of a case where these sources turned out to be wrong – maybe there are, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority have turned out to be accurate. See for example "leak zero" of Flynn talking to the ambassador. We'll see about the example you added on Nunes' sources, but it seems like that information also has multiple confirmations by now. I'd also like to point out that you're moving the goalpost and not answering my question, and that I actually thought about a specific exclusion of the NYT's failure on WMDs because it's getting old. I also seem to remember that it was a very-much-not-anonymous Colin Powell who made the WMD case to the UN which actually allowed the US to invade.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

by endtime 10y ago

Whoever downvoted this: Downvoting should be for comments that are low quality or don't contribute to the conversation, not perfectly fine comments with which you disagree.

fwn 10y ago

I don't necessarily disagree with everything the parent wrote, nor did I downvote, but maybe "I don't think social science is a real science" is not the greatest starting point for making a genuinely social point. It's like saying "I don't think physics actually exists, but here's my take on gravity."

zigzigzag 10y ago
Isn't that a pure opinion, of which you simply disagree? It is hardly a rare opinion at that. It's been a problem for the field since the start: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-social-science-an-oxymoron-will-that-ever-change/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-social-s... There's no contradiction between having views on social issues, and believing that people who call themselves social scientists maybe aren't following the scientific process as usually understood.
- fwn 10y ago
  Oh, he was not saying that there are bad social scientists. This is a completely valid statement to make. However, calling a discipline unscientific is not a matter of taste or opinion. There are a bunch of scientific methods and as long as you stick with them, you are scientific. No matter how well received your results are. (This, by the way, holds also true for climate science.) There is a clear contradiction between calling social science unscientific and then relying on their concepts (trust, institutions, applied law, globalism, groupthink, etc.) in the very same argument. edit: I can not answer to anyone anymore since I'm "submitting too fast. Please slow down." Sorry.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    There is something to the argument that the inability to experiment limits scientific rigor.
    - NoGravitas 10y ago
      Yeah, but to a certain extent that's true of things that no one doubts are science. Evolutionary biology is limited by the fact that evolution is non-repeatable, for example. I used to be an archaeologist. Definitely a field where you can't experiment; you're studying the evidence left by the past. But good methodology in archaeology is making hypotheses about what you expect to find in a new excavation or an inadequately studied old collection, and then testing those hypotheses. Yes, there's a problem with controls, but that's not unique to social science.
      - zigzigzag 10y ago
        Evolution has been proven experimentally, so I'm not sure why you're picking on that specifically. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution Archaeology isn't a science either, even though I've studied it myself and ancient civilisations are a particular favourite area of study for me. Archaeologists and historians in general frequently do things that wouldn't match the usual understanding of the scientific process: that doesn't mean we shouldn't study history, but comparing the fields credibility to that of physics is really problematic. But to clarify, when I said "social science" I was referring to people who explicitly call themselves that. Archaeology and even psychology wouldn't count under that definition - but if someone actually says they are a professor of social science, to me that's an immediate red flag because the "research" produced by such people is in my experience usually just a complicated and expensive form of personal politics blogging. Jonathan Haidt has done a lot of good talks on this topic. There's a paper here: http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-political-diversity/ http://heterodoxacademy.org/2015/09/14/bbs-paper-on-lack-of-...

matt4077 10y ago

I downvoted it because spreading the myth that "mainstream media is lying" is both low-quality and dangerous, and is otherwise a litany of right-wing talking points that add nothing new to the discussion. I'll gladly reconsider if OP can give me a specific example of the New York Times knowingly publishing a statement of fact, in the last year, that turned out to be wrong.

willholloway 10y ago
What is really dangerous is the mainstream media (NY Times, Washington Post) running stories based solely on anonymous sources. The public has no capacity to vet the credibility of anonymously sourced claims. Almost all of the current media narrative on the Russian story comes from stories with nothing more than "American officials say". Remember that "American officials said" that Iraq definitely had WMD. Public support for the invasion was built solely on anonymously sourced news. American officials were actually politically motivated ideologues manufacturing consent, with journalists at the New York Times like Judith Wilson playing the part of the useful idiot. The same thing is happening right now. This [1] New York Times story is a perfect example. There is no place for anonymous sources on issues of war and peace in a republic. Allowing this low a bar for journalistic evidence leaves us completely vulnerable to manipulation. [1] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nunes-intelligence-reports.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/us/politics/devin-nune...
- matt4077 10y ago
  The choice is not to get the same information but from known sources. In most cases, you won't get the information at all. And people misunderstand the mechanism here: journalists quoting unnamed sources put their own reputation on the line as a stand-in for their sources. They know the names, and they build relationships with these sources. The sources/treacherous illoyal leakers/whistleblowers are career politicians or officials, and their relationship with someone at the Journal or the Times is equally valuable for them. Looking at the current storyline on Russia, I know there are daily leaks from "unnamed sources". But I can't think of a case where these sources turned out to be wrong – maybe there are, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority have turned out to be accurate. See for example "leak zero" of Flynn talking to the ambassador. We'll see about the example you added on Nunes' sources, but it seems like that information also has multiple confirmations by now. I'd also like to point out that you're moving the goalpost and not answering my question, and that I actually thought about a specific exclusion of the NYT's failure on WMDs because it's getting old. I also seem to remember that it was a very-much-not-anonymous Colin Powell who made the WMD case to the UN which actually allowed the US to invade.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]