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>Physicists seem to be really good about this Consider the possibility that what you're observing is not so much different cultures, but different levels of re

>Physicists seem to be really good about this Consider the possibility that what you're observing is not so much different cultures, but different levels of resources being provided. Experimental physics receives vast amounts of funding from scientific agencies. Much of this goes to support expensive equipment like particle accelerators and neutrino detectors. However the funding of this infrastructure doesn't occur in a vacuum: the operating budget for these systems also requires the resources to perform careful data collection and analysis. You cannot justify running a quick low-budget experiment with the LHC, simply because it costs too much. It's worth pointing out that most of the boogeyman results people hold up in the "replication crisis" literature are in the fields of the social sciences, where funding is vastly less available. Here you get weaker techniques, fewer resources for replication, and many people who are struggling just to fund any small studies at all. What you immediately diagnose as malicious behavior is much more adequately explained by lack of resources. It is very human to think that the problem is bad humans. But in the real world, the biggest factor is almost always resources. Everything else is downstream of that.

jackcosgrove 2y ago
The social sciences also have a much more limited ability to perform controlled experiments because of ethical reasons, which cannot be resolved with more money. So much of the studies published in these fields are observational rather than controlled experiments. Physics (and chemistry, to a lesser extent biology, and medicine lesser still) has an advantage in that it's exploring the parts of the universe where controlled experiments are possible. I don't think it's all about resources, and I think the social sciences are less resourced in part because grant-making bodies know that these fields suffer from these intrinsic limitations.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  It kind of depends on where you are in physics. It might be easy for a materials scientist to do a controlled experiment, but it's approximately impossible for an astrophysicist. You can't exactly randomly assign celestial bodies to treatment and non-treatment groups; all you can do is observe.
nonameiguess 2y ago
It's not even that. Physicists can generate quadrillions of elementary particles per nanosecond and observe whatever interactions they're looking for faster than they can type up the paper. Human subject research requires recruitment, consent, IRB approval, waiting possibly decades for effects to show up. Hacker News seems to think physicists are just uniquely better scientists for some reason. They're not. Some research questions are inherently harder to answer. There is no particle collider analog that can spawn a few million humans out of thin air, give them heart disease, perform a surgery, and tell you what happens in a matter of minutes, no matter how much funding you sink into it.

jackcosgrove 2y ago

The social sciences also have a much more limited ability to perform controlled experiments because of ethical reasons, which cannot be resolved with more money. So much of the studies published in these fields are observational rather than controlled experiments. Physics (and chemistry, to a lesser extent biology, and medicine lesser still) has an advantage in that it's exploring the parts of the universe where controlled experiments are possible. I don't think it's all about resources, and I think the social sciences are less resourced in part because grant-making bodies know that these fields suffer from these intrinsic limitations.

bunderbunder 2y ago
It kind of depends on where you are in physics. It might be easy for a materials scientist to do a controlled experiment, but it's approximately impossible for an astrophysicist. You can't exactly randomly assign celestial bodies to treatment and non-treatment groups; all you can do is observe.

nonameiguess 2y ago

It's not even that. Physicists can generate quadrillions of elementary particles per nanosecond and observe whatever interactions they're looking for faster than they can type up the paper. Human subject research requires recruitment, consent, IRB approval, waiting possibly decades for effects to show up. Hacker News seems to think physicists are just uniquely better scientists for some reason. They're not. Some research questions are inherently harder to answer. There is no particle collider analog that can spawn a few million humans out of thin air, give them heart disease, perform a surgery, and tell you what happens in a matter of minutes, no matter how much funding you sink into it.