The real issue is that the "true" confidence levels in the social sciences are nowhere near that. We can hack together models and fit them to make an argument l

The real issue is that the "true" confidence levels in the social sciences are nowhere near that. We can hack together models and fit them to make an argument look compelling, but most of the stuff we "know" to be objectively true is descriptive, not prescriptive. I think any good social scientist regarding UBI will tell you that we honestly don't have any fucking clue what would happen because the differences between Namibia, Finland, etc are so vast and we have so little data. These studies are important parts of building up that dataset, but to make policy considerations (or even something like an assumption in social science) is much, much more likely to provide a "wrong" or "bad" choice, than after we've got better data. If you really were to dig into any given study, you can in many cases find a lot of assumptions which we have to accept to even attempt a study. We all tend to be pretty bad at measuring truth levels, that's why the criticism is necessary.