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I think it is reasonable to question academia and research but I think a problem, often, is people want science and research to give us answers. It does not, i

I think it is reasonable to question academia and research but I think a problem, often, is people want science and research to give us answers. It does not, it provides evidence, and once that evidence gets supported enough times it is viewed as closer and closer to reality. I would say it is asymptotic though, we never reach what is fact because there can always be a missing piece of evidence that shows a different result. There is one statement you make that I do want to directly comment on. The point of more research is needed is simply, that more research is needed. It goes directly to your statement of "do we know more about human behavior due to the ..." We learn more with all research and the way research currently gets disseminated is through publication. More research is needed publications as well as null result research is extremely useful in the research community and often does not get the attention outside (or inside sadly) the scientific community that it deserves.

dalbasal 9y ago
I'm not arguing at the philosophical level. My views are fairly mundane on that. I'm talking about the implementation of that philosophy (where I agree with you) in academia, as a system. When I say "build knowledge", I'm speaking colloquially. For a contrived example, we know traits are inherited by animals via genetics. We're confident enough to treat this as knowledge and design other expirements that take this as an assumption. Are we building this kind of knowledge in social science, currently? Does "more research needed" lead to more research being done, typically in a field? If not, why? Why are we moving on to a new question, when the last one is still unanswered. Take a "willpower is a limited resource" hypothesis (replication issues aside). It does not seem impossible to answer this question. Nothing in science is "knowledge" in an absolute sense, but we can get to some level of confidence. So.. do we want to know the answer to this question? If not, why do the the first expirement? If yes, then what would it take to get to an answer? We can answer that partially in advance. Independant replication will be part of the answer. Sufficient sample size also. If we know in advance that these things won't be done, what is the point? I'm an outsider and I realize I may be throwing unwarranted dirt, so if/where I am, apologies. I think that in some fields we systematically do not do the things necessary to get to useful knowledge, a sufficient accumulation of evidence to treat a result as more than anecdote.

dalbasal 9y ago

I'm not arguing at the philosophical level. My views are fairly mundane on that. I'm talking about the implementation of that philosophy (where I agree with you) in academia, as a system. When I say "build knowledge", I'm speaking colloquially. For a contrived example, we know traits are inherited by animals via genetics. We're confident enough to treat this as knowledge and design other expirements that take this as an assumption. Are we building this kind of knowledge in social science, currently? Does "more research needed" lead to more research being done, typically in a field? If not, why? Why are we moving on to a new question, when the last one is still unanswered. Take a "willpower is a limited resource" hypothesis (replication issues aside). It does not seem impossible to answer this question. Nothing in science is "knowledge" in an absolute sense, but we can get to some level of confidence. So.. do we want to know the answer to this question? If not, why do the the first expirement? If yes, then what would it take to get to an answer? We can answer that partially in advance. Independant replication will be part of the answer. Sufficient sample size also. If we know in advance that these things won't be done, what is the point? I'm an outsider and I realize I may be throwing unwarranted dirt, so if/where I am, apologies. I think that in some fields we systematically do not do the things necessary to get to useful knowledge, a sufficient accumulation of evidence to treat a result as more than anecdote.