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The question isn’t whether it’s important at all, but whether it’s a worthwhile use of taxpayer money compared to other priorities. With social sciences much o
by transcriptase 2y ago
The question isn’t whether it’s important at all, but whether it’s a worthwhile use of taxpayer money compared to other priorities.
With social sciences much of the “qualitative research” involves interviewing a small handful of people, interpreting their responses to fit a preconceived narrative, and then stretching the results into a lengthy paper. This is usually done by using the most convoluted synonyms available and repeatedly invoking terms like “intersectionality”, “lived experience”, and “power structures” to lend the work an academic veneer. The result? A paper that boils down to anecdotal evidence supporting the author’s opinion, which is almost certainly whatever best meshes with their political ideology.
- xrisk 2y agoRegardless, it’s important that people document and collect such anecdotal evidences (assuming it’s done somewhat properly and not cherry picked) In my book, pure numbers can’t capture the complex realities that people face in their lives.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago"anecdotal evidences" is an oxymoron. Anecdotes by their nature cannot be considered evidence of anything, not enough to satisfy any level of scientific rigor at least People can write a blog if they want to document their own stories. We don't need to use taxpayer funds to go interview them and we definitely do not need to be trying to draw scientific conclusions from small handfuls of people's anecdotes
- drdeca 2y agoEvidence is that which provides a reason/justification to change beliefs. When it was noticed that people working with cows (and who were therefore often exposed to cow pox) didn’t seem to get chickenpox, this seems to me an example of a collection of anecdotes, and yet it was evidence.
- bluefirebrand 2y agoIt was evidence enough to justify forming a hypothesis and getting funding for further study, but not evidence to consider it a scientific conclusion. Drawing generalizable scientific conclusions is a high bar to reach but it should be. Clearing that high bar is what is going to actually produce real value for society A research project that produces a small collection of anecdotes is not scientific research, it is journalism. There's nothing wrong with that. Those anecdotes might be important to share, they might be interesting to hear, they might be historically relevant. But we cannot draw scientific conclusions from them, which is what we should expect from scientific research projects
- drdeca 2y agoThat, I think I can agree with. It seems to me reasonable to say that the requirements for something to qualify as “scientific evidence” are stricter than to qualify as “evidence”, and that anecdotes don’t qualify as “scientific evidence”.
- transcriptase 2y agoFurthermore, once it’s published in even the shoddiest journal that “research” gets cited by politicians/orgs with an agenda as if it was a Nature-worthy large-scale longitudinal cohort study of millions.
- xp84 2y agoI have no problem with people interviewing them. It doesn't cost that much money to do so. The people who are interested in learning more about that particular group can interview and self-publish books. The government is there to help a society do important things to most or all of society that are impractical to do individually. (e.g. road or rail networks, national defense, space program, paying for retirement of workers, medical care in most places, etc). Interviewing 12 youths about their feelings about gender and writing about it is neither impractical to conduct with one person's time and funds, nor is it something that more than a small fraction of the people are asking for.