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Maybe none of this ideological bullshit is the real issue? Maybe the major problem is that hard vs soft sciences are subject to different experimental controls

Maybe none of this ideological bullshit is the real issue? Maybe the major problem is that hard vs soft sciences are subject to different experimental controls and confounding factors, not to mention standards of rigor. If you claim to discover a new particle your n will be in the billions, and a whole community will analyze your results with a fine comb. Meanwhile if you make a claim about implicit bias or the nutritional value of coffee it’s based on tiny samples with huge variability. It’d be cool if your and the other poster’s ideological spat could try to not use science as the battleground, or at least eliminate more likely issues before going there. Social sciences are hardly even science from the perspective of a chemist or physicist, there’s no need to delve into petty ideology. Methodology is a much richer source of hurdles to overcome than old and sad debates.

quantumofmalice 8y ago
> It’d be cool if your and the other poster’s ideological spat could try to not use science as the battleground, or at least eliminate more likely issues before going there. I don't disagree. A big part of the problem is the social sciences claiming the mantel of science (often just statistics layered over tiny samples, as you point out), in order to imply some sort of impartiality and precision on par with the hard (i.e. real) sciences. Unfortunately, and I say this sincerely, I believe the ideological nature of the social sciences since the 60s has been responsible for a huge amount of uncritical acceptance of bad (false) work as well as preventing a lot of unpopular good (true) work. I don't know how to deal with that fact other than stating so forthrightly, which, unfortunately from the perspective of science, carries necessary ideological freight with it.
trhway 8y ago
>Social sciences are hardly even science from the perspective of a chemist or physicist A chemist or a physicist still have hard time dealing with particle assemblies of say 100-100000 particles. For several last centuries they learnt to deal with [aggregate properties of] assemblies on the scale of 10e20+ particles. Only during last century they came to pretty good understanding of 1 particle. In social sciences this is Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (ie. they are real social science today, not some professor in an office). This is the scale where aggregate properties appear, and they start to be able to drill down from it.

quantumofmalice 8y ago

> It’d be cool if your and the other poster’s ideological spat could try to not use science as the battleground, or at least eliminate more likely issues before going there. I don't disagree. A big part of the problem is the social sciences claiming the mantel of science (often just statistics layered over tiny samples, as you point out), in order to imply some sort of impartiality and precision on par with the hard (i.e. real) sciences. Unfortunately, and I say this sincerely, I believe the ideological nature of the social sciences since the 60s has been responsible for a huge amount of uncritical acceptance of bad (false) work as well as preventing a lot of unpopular good (true) work. I don't know how to deal with that fact other than stating so forthrightly, which, unfortunately from the perspective of science, carries necessary ideological freight with it.

trhway 8y ago

>Social sciences are hardly even science from the perspective of a chemist or physicist A chemist or a physicist still have hard time dealing with particle assemblies of say 100-100000 particles. For several last centuries they learnt to deal with [aggregate properties of] assemblies on the scale of 10e20+ particles. Only during last century they came to pretty good understanding of 1 particle. In social sciences this is Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (ie. they are real social science today, not some professor in an office). This is the scale where aggregate properties appear, and they start to be able to drill down from it.