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Saying that social scientists need to be taught intellectual humility is tantamount to saying they are not scientists at all, which seems to be the real problem

by Gatsky 8y ago

Saying that social scientists need to be taught intellectual humility is tantamount to saying they are not scientists at all, which seems to be the real problem.

dang 8y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Flozzin 8y ago
Social scientists are people. We are all people first. None of us are robots. We can be rational in certain situations, but overall, we are not a rational species. In order to fight some of our worse qualities, we have to first identify them. Then break down any social barriers that keep us from not fighting them. That is what this article is doing. It is naming one of them, and then asking us to be forgiving. And helping us realize that mistakes are not as punished as we all may think.
- Gatsky 8y ago
  We need to defend science. It's the best thing we have. This includes rejecting a discipline which purports to be a science, but actually isn't. The problem that social science has is that all the senior people in academic positions got there by doing studies which are probably wrong. They cannot admit this because it makes their role untenable. The solution described in this post is to basically say 'Hey, we are ALL wrong', somehow normalising the fact that a lot of baloney has been published. We should not accept and certainly not encourage this behaviour. If social science wants to take up the mantle of doing good scientific work, then they need to sort out the huge methodological flaws in how they do things, and stop publicising and promulgating unconfirmed and biased results. It isn't like they are volunteers, they get paid, they make money from books, even win Nobel prizes for their work. Other scientists quietly get on with doing proper work, which is why we have things like vaccines and the internet and modern computing. We certainly do not have any of these things because someone decided they needed more intellectual humility.
paradoxparalax 8y ago
Maybe Doctors and bio-scientists need a yearly dose of learning too, then. See Bloodletting[1], for example. What about Climate scientists? science is hard. 1-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting

by Gatsky 8y ago

Saying that social scientists need to be taught intellectual humility is tantamount to saying they are not scientists at all, which seems to be the real problem.

dang 8y ago

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Flozzin 8y ago

Social scientists are people. We are all people first. None of us are robots. We can be rational in certain situations, but overall, we are not a rational species. In order to fight some of our worse qualities, we have to first identify them. Then break down any social barriers that keep us from not fighting them. That is what this article is doing. It is naming one of them, and then asking us to be forgiving. And helping us realize that mistakes are not as punished as we all may think.

Gatsky 8y ago
We need to defend science. It's the best thing we have. This includes rejecting a discipline which purports to be a science, but actually isn't. The problem that social science has is that all the senior people in academic positions got there by doing studies which are probably wrong. They cannot admit this because it makes their role untenable. The solution described in this post is to basically say 'Hey, we are ALL wrong', somehow normalising the fact that a lot of baloney has been published. We should not accept and certainly not encourage this behaviour. If social science wants to take up the mantle of doing good scientific work, then they need to sort out the huge methodological flaws in how they do things, and stop publicising and promulgating unconfirmed and biased results. It isn't like they are volunteers, they get paid, they make money from books, even win Nobel prizes for their work. Other scientists quietly get on with doing proper work, which is why we have things like vaccines and the internet and modern computing. We certainly do not have any of these things because someone decided they needed more intellectual humility.

paradoxparalax 8y ago

Maybe Doctors and bio-scientists need a yearly dose of learning too, then. See Bloodletting[1], for example. What about Climate scientists? science is hard. 1-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting