4 ms·

It’s high time we accept that social sciences have nothing scientific about them, and are just a mix of political ideology and astrology. I already said this b

It’s high time we accept that social sciences have nothing scientific about them, and are just a mix of political ideology and astrology. I already said this before and I’ll repeat it. Media constantly portraying social sciences and their findings as actual science, is a big culprit of all this disbelief the masses are showing towards real science (the physical and natural sciences).

CJefferson 3y ago
I’m not sure the social sciences are any more scientifically corrupt than the “harder” sciences.
- orzig 3y ago
  Biology has probably had the most replication scandals of the hard sciences, but if you look back 10 years, there have been several tangible breakthroughs. CRISPR, mRNA vaccines, Cystic Fibrosis treatments, malaria vaccine, and that’s just off the top of my head. So let’s not throw the baby out with a bathwater on Science. I would be interested to see what other peoples comparable list would be for the social sciences – I don’t know enough to say that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence“
  - realityfactchex 3y ago
    Here's the thing: even some of the listed items "off the top of your head" as counterexamples are entirely fraudulent. I don't think anybody's trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is entirely serious. But most people have no idea how broad and deep the reach of the hard science integrity problem goes (at least in biology). Not only that, but it's HARD for people to know, and there are with 100% certainty efforts to keep it that way.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  You honestly believe that the social sciences have the same rigor as physics?
  - sitkack 3y ago
    corruption and rigor are different things.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      Can't really be corrupt if you have enough rigor.
      - dahart 3y ago
        Oh, lots of people have been rigorous about their corruption. Maybe they only got caught because they’re not rigorous enough. :P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_misconduct_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_misconduct_...
        willcipriano 3y ago
        Physics: "Elements of what became physics were drawn primarily from the fields of astronomy, optics, and mechanics, which were methodologically united through the study of geometry. These mathematical disciplines began in antiquity with the Babylonians and with Hellenistic writers such as Archimedes and Ptolemy." Established: 200 BC[0] Social Sciences: "The history of the social sciences began in the Age of Enlightenment after 1650" Established: 1650 AD[1] Physics: 2224 year history Social Sciences: 374 year history Physics: 3 incidents of misconduct on Wikipedia article (and that includes engineering as well). Social Sciences: 11 incidents of misconduct on Wikipedia article. Physics: One incident per 741 years. Social Sciences: One incident per 34 years. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  The harder sciences get to lay claim to things like AI and cell phones. Anti-depressants and EV's. Social sciences get to lay claim to CBT?
  - dahart 3y ago
    So? That list has nothing to do with corruption in the sciences. BTW, social sciences get credit for the modern economy and for the known history of humankind, for modern farming, for today’s government and policy, for mental health and mental therapies, for modern advertising, for understanding of languages, and for modern corporate management, just to name a few.
    - 20after4 3y ago
      Your list includes a lot of things I wouldn't be proud to claim as accomplishments.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
rhelz 3y ago
The question of whether social sciences are sciences is subtle to answer. If we take Francis Bacon's method as more or less what a science is, then, in order to be a science, we need to be able to do experiments. Experiments are objective (anybody can watch it happening), communicable (you can tell anybody how to do the experiment), and repeatable (anybody can do it). An example would be something like chemistry. An experiment could be burning hydrogen with oxygen to see if it yielded water. There is a very strong sense in which anybody could do this same exact experiment. It is repeatable by anybody, it happens in an objective space we can all observe. Now, take something like history (perhaps one of the social sciences). It's proverbial that history repeats itself, but can you do experiments in history? Not really, because you can't do something like rerun WWII, only this time the nazi's didn't chase out Einstein. Note, this doesn't mean that History is bogus. Yes, it takes as its object of study something which you can't perform experiments on, but nevertheless, it does have other methods which are apropos to its subject matter, and it is a discipline--doing history is scholarship. It yields knowledge--just not scientific knowledge in the sense of the Baconian scientific method. Economics is the same--we can't just re-run the Reagan era, only this time without trickle-down economics. If somebody is studying, say, the causes of the great depression, their subject matter isn't something which you can gain knowledge about using experiments. Doesn't mean you can't get economic knowledge in other ways. So....what about Psychology? Specifically, somebody who studies...deception. Is deception something you gain knowledge about by doing experiments? If you take a group of people and try to deceive them, and study what happens, is that an experiment? Its not, and for a very interesting reason: the "is-ought" distinction. Experiments can tell you the "is"--what is happening. But they can't tell you the "oughts"--what should be happening. In English, we use two different verb moods to mark the distinction, e.g. "Fred is not lying" vs "Fred should not be lying." Now, you can perform experiments and observations to determine whether or not Fred is not telling the truth. But lying? Lying has an extra ingredient, the intention to deceive. Intentions are subjective and not observable in the same way that a chemistry experiment is. Very problematic from the standpoint of Baconian science. But what is completely outside the scope of Baconian science is determining whether a sentence like "Fred should not be lying" is true. If Fred is hiding jews in the basement, should he lie to the stormtroopers at his front door? If he had an affair, but its over and he wants to stay happily married to his wife, should he lie to her if she asked him whether he had an affair? There are no experiments--in the sense of yielding publicly observable and repeatable results--which will tell you this. Note, this doesn't mean that Psychology is bogus, any more than History is Bogus. It's just Psychology has as its subject matter, some phenomena which are not amenable to experiment. It used to develop methods--like psychoanalysis--which were more apropos to studying its subject matter. But these days, it seems to be embarrassed about all that, and wants to be a "respectable" science. Instead of Freud theorizing about how childhood trauma affects adult moodiness, they do things like study whether or not prozac helps depression. Studying whether or not a drug can boost serotonin levels in the brain can be investigated scientifically, but in an important sense, it is changing the subject. We're not talking about humans anymore, we are talking about what chemicals do to neuron serotonin re-uptake. So, what if you are an assistant professor, desperately trying to get some scientific results so you can get tenure? If you try to study something like "deception" scientifically---doing experiments on sophomores--you'll run up against the brute fact that your subject matter can't be studied scientifically. You can call what you are doing "experimenting", but any results you get will not be repeatable. This is a problem if you are trying to get tenure. Psychology could have just said "hey, we are more like economics and history than we are like chemistry, so lets develop some methods appropriate to investigating our subject matter." But no. What they did instead was just make up results, on what looks like a phenomenal scale. And its been going so long that we have generations of people who got their Ph.D. from somebody who cheated their way through. And even if they wanted not to cheat---they are competing with their peers who will happily cheat. The result is sad stories like the OP. It's a vicious circle, a race to the bottom. Honesty is punished, deception is rewarded. The whole field has seriously lost its way. They need to get back to realizing that they are studying a subject matter which needs different methods than experimentation to study.

CJefferson 3y ago

I’m not sure the social sciences are any more scientifically corrupt than the “harder” sciences.

orzig 3y ago
Biology has probably had the most replication scandals of the hard sciences, but if you look back 10 years, there have been several tangible breakthroughs. CRISPR, mRNA vaccines, Cystic Fibrosis treatments, malaria vaccine, and that’s just off the top of my head. So let’s not throw the baby out with a bathwater on Science. I would be interested to see what other peoples comparable list would be for the social sciences – I don’t know enough to say that “absence of evidence is evidence of absence“
- realityfactchex 3y ago
  Here's the thing: even some of the listed items "off the top of your head" as counterexamples are entirely fraudulent. I don't think anybody's trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is entirely serious. But most people have no idea how broad and deep the reach of the hard science integrity problem goes (at least in biology). Not only that, but it's HARD for people to know, and there are with 100% certainty efforts to keep it that way.
willcipriano 3y ago
You honestly believe that the social sciences have the same rigor as physics?
- sitkack 3y ago
  corruption and rigor are different things.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    Can't really be corrupt if you have enough rigor.
    - dahart 3y ago
      Oh, lots of people have been rigorous about their corruption. Maybe they only got caught because they’re not rigorous enough. :P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_misconduct_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientific_misconduct_...
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        Physics: "Elements of what became physics were drawn primarily from the fields of astronomy, optics, and mechanics, which were methodologically united through the study of geometry. These mathematical disciplines began in antiquity with the Babylonians and with Hellenistic writers such as Archimedes and Ptolemy." Established: 200 BC[0] Social Sciences: "The history of the social sciences began in the Age of Enlightenment after 1650" Established: 1650 AD[1] Physics: 2224 year history Social Sciences: 374 year history Physics: 3 incidents of misconduct on Wikipedia article (and that includes engineering as well). Social Sciences: 11 incidents of misconduct on Wikipedia article. Physics: One incident per 741 years. Social Sciences: One incident per 34 years. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_physics [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- xkcd-sucks 3y ago
Workaccount2 3y ago
The harder sciences get to lay claim to things like AI and cell phones. Anti-depressants and EV's. Social sciences get to lay claim to CBT?
- dahart 3y ago
  So? That list has nothing to do with corruption in the sciences. BTW, social sciences get credit for the modern economy and for the known history of humankind, for modern farming, for today’s government and policy, for mental health and mental therapies, for modern advertising, for understanding of languages, and for modern corporate management, just to name a few.
  - 20after4 3y ago
    Your list includes a lot of things I wouldn't be proud to claim as accomplishments.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

rhelz 3y ago

The question of whether social sciences are sciences is subtle to answer. If we take Francis Bacon's method as more or less what a science is, then, in order to be a science, we need to be able to do experiments. Experiments are objective (anybody can watch it happening), communicable (you can tell anybody how to do the experiment), and repeatable (anybody can do it). An example would be something like chemistry. An experiment could be burning hydrogen with oxygen to see if it yielded water. There is a very strong sense in which anybody could do this same exact experiment. It is repeatable by anybody, it happens in an objective space we can all observe. Now, take something like history (perhaps one of the social sciences). It's proverbial that history repeats itself, but can you do experiments in history? Not really, because you can't do something like rerun WWII, only this time the nazi's didn't chase out Einstein. Note, this doesn't mean that History is bogus. Yes, it takes as its object of study something which you can't perform experiments on, but nevertheless, it does have other methods which are apropos to its subject matter, and it is a discipline--doing history is scholarship. It yields knowledge--just not scientific knowledge in the sense of the Baconian scientific method. Economics is the same--we can't just re-run the Reagan era, only this time without trickle-down economics. If somebody is studying, say, the causes of the great depression, their subject matter isn't something which you can gain knowledge about using experiments. Doesn't mean you can't get economic knowledge in other ways. So....what about Psychology? Specifically, somebody who studies...deception. Is deception something you gain knowledge about by doing experiments? If you take a group of people and try to deceive them, and study what happens, is that an experiment? Its not, and for a very interesting reason: the "is-ought" distinction. Experiments can tell you the "is"--what is happening. But they can't tell you the "oughts"--what should be happening. In English, we use two different verb moods to mark the distinction, e.g. "Fred is not lying" vs "Fred should not be lying." Now, you can perform experiments and observations to determine whether or not Fred is not telling the truth. But lying? Lying has an extra ingredient, the intention to deceive. Intentions are subjective and not observable in the same way that a chemistry experiment is. Very problematic from the standpoint of Baconian science. But what is completely outside the scope of Baconian science is determining whether a sentence like "Fred should not be lying" is true. If Fred is hiding jews in the basement, should he lie to the stormtroopers at his front door? If he had an affair, but its over and he wants to stay happily married to his wife, should he lie to her if she asked him whether he had an affair? There are no experiments--in the sense of yielding publicly observable and repeatable results--which will tell you this. Note, this doesn't mean that Psychology is bogus, any more than History is Bogus. It's just Psychology has as its subject matter, some phenomena which are not amenable to experiment. It used to develop methods--like psychoanalysis--which were more apropos to studying its subject matter. But these days, it seems to be embarrassed about all that, and wants to be a "respectable" science. Instead of Freud theorizing about how childhood trauma affects adult moodiness, they do things like study whether or not prozac helps depression. Studying whether or not a drug can boost serotonin levels in the brain can be investigated scientifically, but in an important sense, it is changing the subject. We're not talking about humans anymore, we are talking about what chemicals do to neuron serotonin re-uptake. So, what if you are an assistant professor, desperately trying to get some scientific results so you can get tenure? If you try to study something like "deception" scientifically---doing experiments on sophomores--you'll run up against the brute fact that your subject matter can't be studied scientifically. You can call what you are doing "experimenting", but any results you get will not be repeatable. This is a problem if you are trying to get tenure. Psychology could have just said "hey, we are more like economics and history than we are like chemistry, so lets develop some methods appropriate to investigating our subject matter." But no. What they did instead was just make up results, on what looks like a phenomenal scale. And its been going so long that we have generations of people who got their Ph.D. from somebody who cheated their way through. And even if they wanted not to cheat---they are competing with their peers who will happily cheat. The result is sad stories like the OP. It's a vicious circle, a race to the bottom. Honesty is punished, deception is rewarded. The whole field has seriously lost its way. They need to get back to realizing that they are studying a subject matter which needs different methods than experimentation to study.