3 ms·
My internal filter is: Sociology/Psych/Economics are almost all junk. Their conclusions may or may not be correct. Medical studies are mostly junk. There's
by treis 3y ago
My internal filter is:
Sociology/Psych/Economics are almost all junk. Their conclusions may or may not be correct.
Medical studies are mostly junk. There's way too much financial incentive to show marginal improvement. Theraflu and anti-depressents come to mind. Both show a small effect in studies and launched billion dollar businesses.
Hard science stuff tends to be pretty good. Mostly just outright fraud and they usually end up getting caught.
- fnikacevic 3y agoChemistry still has a ton of issues with people exaggerating numbers that can't be contested like yield and purity of reactions even among the top journals. Straight up fraud is rarer yes.
- mike_hearn 3y agoI used to think like that. Soft science = dubious, hard science = ok. Not any more though. Just recently there was LK99 in materials science though, which was pretty much the textbook definition of an exciting but non-replicable claim. Also a lot of stuff is tough to classify. Are epidemiology or climatology "hard" sciences?