It is not generally possible and or ethical to apply the scientific method to these topics to arrive at greater understanding. People who understand science al

It is not generally possible and or ethical to apply the scientific method to these topics to arrive at greater understanding. People who understand science also understand the method is the basis for science. It's a simple thing, and when applied yields understanding. Understanding isn't knowing in some absolute sense either. It's in the predictive sense. We do A and get B. Degrees of confidence, and scope of applicability are relevant here too. Old understanding is as valid today as it was upon realization, for example. It's that we understand more and or the outcome of that greater understanding puts the scope necessary to get things done, or improve on our body of understanding, well outside what older understanding can do for us. General Relativity works well, until it doesn't, in which case we must use Special Relativity, for example. The basic problems we've got with these two areas of interest is an inability to roll back the clock and repeat experiments. Secondly, people are unique entities, unlike atoms and other things we encounter and want to study, and given we are discussing people here, subjecting them to experiments has numerous ethical and legal concerns. What we can do is work with the data we do get as an artifact of the people and their agency as well as the machinery of society and apply rational, and people who are experienced in these areas would argue inferential thinking as well as deductive type thinking, post fact and arrive at something like understanding[1], but the nature of all that means confidence is low, repeatability for all but supremely exceptional circumstances, and most definitely not on any sort of demand, is off the table. Add all that up, and it's not really science in the basic sense applying the scientific method can add to our body of scientific understanding.[0] It can't be! We are denied the use of the method! [0] Ideally, our body of scientific understanding is all rooted in the scientific method. What we get from our study of these two won't be rooted in the scientific method. [1] This is not to say these areas of study have no value! They absolutely do have value. Please do not take my argument here as anything other than an attempt to clarify why they are not science.