5 ms·

The article doesn't discuss what the fields actually are that got labeled. In my opinion things such as sociology, psychology, economics, and political science

The article doesn't discuss what the fields actually are that got labeled. In my opinion things such as sociology, psychology, economics, and political science are all "soft" Simply because the complexity of the systems makes them insanely difficult to analyze and we don't have a firm grip on the mechanics, not because there are more women. Correlation != causation Edited to add: from my perspective, the label of something as a "hard" science comes from the solidity of analysis and models. How well and how often, how reproducible are the models and results when compared to the real system? The closer the model is to reality, the more solid or "hard" the science

jevoten 5y ago
It also doesn't reveal the size of the effect, or their sample size. It keeps its cards very close to the chest.
- sseagull 5y ago
  It’s part of the published article. Behind a paywall of course, but here is a preprint: https://psyarxiv.com/xyast/ https://psyarxiv.com/xyast/ A few parts to the study. One had 167 participants and had them label fields as hard or soft given a (sometimes incorrect) number of men vs. women. Another had 220 and went the opposite way (given a description of a field as hard vs. soft, estimate men vs. women). All participants recruited via mechanical turk. Theres a lot more discussion and a few other subparts. Glancing at it it seems like a correlation, but not super strong. Also, not my field at all. So reading it in detail is probably not helpful.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Oh no. I would not use mturk for psych studies. I know its been on the rise and its not a good way to sample a population at all.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > All participants recruited via mechanical turk. That skews the demographic so much the study is basically unusable.
    - sseagull 5y ago
      While I kind of agree, I am also sympathetic to the fact that finding study participants that aren't heavily skewed is very difficult, and would probably be prohibitively expensive to do for every single study.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        In this case it's better to survey a sample that is skewed but in a known way (you can then address these biases in the paper) as opposed to skewed in an unknown way via mechanical turk (how many are pretending to be part of the demographic you targeted just because western academic surveys pay more?).

jevoten 5y ago

It also doesn't reveal the size of the effect, or their sample size. It keeps its cards very close to the chest.

sseagull 5y ago
It’s part of the published article. Behind a paywall of course, but here is a preprint: https://psyarxiv.com/xyast/ https://psyarxiv.com/xyast/ A few parts to the study. One had 167 participants and had them label fields as hard or soft given a (sometimes incorrect) number of men vs. women. Another had 220 and went the opposite way (given a description of a field as hard vs. soft, estimate men vs. women). All participants recruited via mechanical turk. Theres a lot more discussion and a few other subparts. Glancing at it it seems like a correlation, but not super strong. Also, not my field at all. So reading it in detail is probably not helpful.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Oh no. I would not use mturk for psych studies. I know its been on the rise and its not a good way to sample a population at all.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > All participants recruited via mechanical turk. That skews the demographic so much the study is basically unusable.
  - sseagull 5y ago
    While I kind of agree, I am also sympathetic to the fact that finding study participants that aren't heavily skewed is very difficult, and would probably be prohibitively expensive to do for every single study.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      In this case it's better to survey a sample that is skewed but in a known way (you can then address these biases in the paper) as opposed to skewed in an unknown way via mechanical turk (how many are pretending to be part of the demographic you targeted just because western academic surveys pay more?).