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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

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-...

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-...