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Yes, exactly. Real science does repeatable experiments. Humans are all different. There is no true control.

subaquamille 6y ago
Besides ethics - should we also stop calling science studies implying monkeys ? Non self aware animals as rats ? What about Ants or Coral ? Please defined "no true control" because you may only make science on Math then.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  A true control is a control group that is physically indistinguishable from the experiment group. You mention monkeys and rats, this is precisely why they use knockout mice for many studies and the same reason why demonstrating something in mice doesn’t always translate to demonstration in another organism. Math is a formal system, it admits no experiments.
antegamisou 6y ago
Seeing science, humans and control, cybernetics comes to mind. You're in for a surprise if you still hold the unsubstantial belief social science is not real science.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  Its a semantic debate and I’m gatekeeping “real science” to mean things that can be repeated and verified or disproven.
mrbungie 6y ago
What is "Real science"? May you're thinking something that follows a specific method or satisfies some specific requirements. If you want to challenge that view, see this: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/ PS: That's not to say that this specific study is not bullshit.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  I’m making the bold claim that science is about falsifiable hypotheses. Falsification breaks down in situations where there is no proper control.
phobosanomaly 6y ago
Here's a repeatable experiment in the social sciences: Do Conditional Cash Transfers Improve Child Health? Evidence from PROGRESA's Control Randomized Experiment Author(s): Paul Gertler Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 94, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association San Diego, CA, January 3-5, 2004 (May, 2004), pp. 336-341 From Section IV (you're gonna have to Sci-Hub it): "The randomization and the fact that the control and treatment samples are well balanced in the observed characteristics imply that a simple comparison of mean outcomes post-intervention will likely provide an unbiased estimate of program impacts. However, I also control for other observed socioeconomic characteristics in order to reduce idiosyncratic variation and to improve the power of the estimates." Is this really more sus than a cell bio paper? Are the conclusions so weak that it's not real science? Were you just being sarcastic and it went over my head?
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  It’s not strictly repeatable because those experimental subjects are not identical to the ones you would use to repeat the experiment. Not only are they morphologically different specimens, but they are culturally/behaviorally different as well. I’m not being sarcastic, I’m being strict about what constitutes a basis for a valid generalization. > Is this really more sus than a cell bio paper? Are the conclusions so weak that it's not real science? Its not necessarily that its more suspect or weaker, but that it is in a different epistemological category. Its a different kind of evidence. When you inject particles into a cloud chamber, you believe with very high confidence that those particles have fundamentally identical properties as the other particles of the same kind. We know that humans are not alike each other in the same way as particles. Therefore we are not permitted to treat them that way.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    What's the purpose of being so strict about what constitutes that basis for a valid generalization? What does it ultimately accomplish?
    - 6y ago

Besides ethics - should we also stop calling science studies implying monkeys ? Non self aware animals as rats ? What about Ants or Coral ? Please defined "no true control" because you may only make science on Math then.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
A true control is a control group that is physically indistinguishable from the experiment group. You mention monkeys and rats, this is precisely why they use knockout mice for many studies and the same reason why demonstrating something in mice doesn’t always translate to demonstration in another organism. Math is a formal system, it admits no experiments.

antegamisou 6y ago

Seeing science, humans and control, cybernetics comes to mind. You're in for a surprise if you still hold the unsubstantial belief social science is not real science.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
Its a semantic debate and I’m gatekeeping “real science” to mean things that can be repeated and verified or disproven.

mrbungie 6y ago

What is "Real science"? May you're thinking something that follows a specific method or satisfies some specific requirements. If you want to challenge that view, see this: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-method/ PS: That's not to say that this specific study is not bullshit.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
I’m making the bold claim that science is about falsifiable hypotheses. Falsification breaks down in situations where there is no proper control.

phobosanomaly 6y ago

Here's a repeatable experiment in the social sciences: Do Conditional Cash Transfers Improve Child Health? Evidence from PROGRESA's Control Randomized Experiment Author(s): Paul Gertler Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 94, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the One Hundred Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association San Diego, CA, January 3-5, 2004 (May, 2004), pp. 336-341 From Section IV (you're gonna have to Sci-Hub it): "The randomization and the fact that the control and treatment samples are well balanced in the observed characteristics imply that a simple comparison of mean outcomes post-intervention will likely provide an unbiased estimate of program impacts. However, I also control for other observed socioeconomic characteristics in order to reduce idiosyncratic variation and to improve the power of the estimates." Is this really more sus than a cell bio paper? Are the conclusions so weak that it's not real science? Were you just being sarcastic and it went over my head?

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
It’s not strictly repeatable because those experimental subjects are not identical to the ones you would use to repeat the experiment. Not only are they morphologically different specimens, but they are culturally/behaviorally different as well. I’m not being sarcastic, I’m being strict about what constitutes a basis for a valid generalization. > Is this really more sus than a cell bio paper? Are the conclusions so weak that it's not real science? Its not necessarily that its more suspect or weaker, but that it is in a different epistemological category. Its a different kind of evidence. When you inject particles into a cloud chamber, you believe with very high confidence that those particles have fundamentally identical properties as the other particles of the same kind. We know that humans are not alike each other in the same way as particles. Therefore we are not permitted to treat them that way.
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  What's the purpose of being so strict about what constitutes that basis for a valid generalization? What does it ultimately accomplish?
  - 6y ago