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Papers like this should be called opinion surveys. Calling it a study is a disservice to science. As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as

Papers like this should be called opinion surveys. Calling it a study is a disservice to science. As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science.

latexr 5mo ago
Edit: It’s becoming ever more increasingly common on HN to get downvotes for innocuous respectful posts. If you’re downvoting, I’d genuinely appreciate if you explained what is it that you find offensive about this post. You’re not going to hurt my feelings, I sincerely want to understand what it is that you see as transgressive so I can learn from it. Thank you. Another example which baffled me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48222383#48227701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48222383#48227701 > As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science. I appreciate Feynman’s contributions—and in fact have been recently revisiting the Messenger lectures—but that seems like an unnecessary jab. The use of “usually” is also a convenient cop-out which makes the remark meaningless because the speaker can pick and choose in any conversation so they always win.¹ I thought about it and picked the first thing which came to mind: Natural science. From Wikipedia²: > Natural science or empirical science is a branch of science concerned with the description, understanding, and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and reproducibility of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Seems pretty scientific to me. But alright, let’s check the article to give it a fair shot in context. The only time the word “science” comes up is “Social Sciences”. Again from Wikipedia³: > Social science (or the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, sociology, culturology, and political science. That’s a wide range. Are all of those “not science”? ¹ Assuming your rephrasing is accurate and not missing important context. ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science ³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science
- eastbound 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - latexr 5mo ago
    You lost me. As in, I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. Are you saying you don’t trust climate science but you would trust them if they declared some other branch of science which has nothing to do with them as being unscientific? What does one thing have to do with the other? Are you also saying medicine is not a science because doctors got it wrong about masks? Science isn’t about always being right, but about observation and experimentation to try to arrive at the truth and a deeper understanding. Can you name a single branch of science which has never got anything wrong ever? Your last paragraph is particularly confusing. Is your entire post sarcastic? And if so, which group exactly are you criticising?
    - eastbound 5mo ago
      Yes, I am saying that I don’t trust anyone who trusts obviously-bad science and requires me to believe it. Some parts of science became political. The goal seems to convince a population, not determine what is true or not. So if you extract one field which is extremely corrupt, with practices that would seem obvious to anyone who studied Stalin, which soils the ideas and principles of sciences, and another fields rejects the idea of denouncing the first field: that demonstrates that they are both politicized sciences. Covid science, climate science and social sciences all three ask you to “trust the science” and use authority to become right. Meanwhile a researcher who is funded by private companies for technical advances, generally produces good science. They don’t usually need to jail their opponents.
      - piva00 5mo ago
        > Meanwhile a researcher who is funded by private companies for technical advances, generally produces good science. They don’t usually need to jail their opponents. This is such an ideology-laden bullshit leap that it pushes you into the "not even wrong" category.
Mordisquitos 5mo ago
What a hollow dismissal of based on acrobatic leaps of semantics. The word 'study' is no sacred possession exclusive to the natural sciences, and there is nothing wrong with properly conducted surveys as a method in sociology, economics or psychology. If surveys targeting the very people responsible for optimising their businesses' productivity, with no incentive to falsify their conclusions, is good evidence. Without any other way to systematically measure the change in productivity across a plethora of different businesses implementing a four-day workweek, it is as good as it gets — much better than purely theoretical assumptions that productivity must have dropped. You can find the study here if you wish to critique its methods: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- aeternum 5mo ago
  I did read it, thus my comment. Did you actually read the methods? This is what you're defending: "Methods This study took a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with n=15 industry leaders" .. "Participants were identified via media reports " .. "A total of n=15 key informants participated in this study" .. "Recent research into appropriate sample sizes for qualitative research found saturation typically occurs between 9 and 17 interviews and the researchers agreed that no fresh insights or themes arose after the twelfth interview in this study (Hennink & Kaiser, 2022)" The interviews contain invaluable insights such as: “adopting the 4DWW takes work” “Productivity up, waste removed” “Management -led/employee -driven,” “Train for leisure,” I stand by my statement.
  - surgical_fire 5mo ago
    Standing by a plainly wrong statement does not make it right. A qualitative study is still a study, especially considering that the subjects of the study are the sort of people that can evaluate the thing being studied.
- EasyMark 5mo ago
kibibu 5mo ago
> As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science. This is such an absurd thought-terminating cliche. Science suffixation seems more an indicator of the age of the field, not its scientific rigour. Are "climate science" and "computer science" not science? On the flip side, just because it says "ology" at the end of a word does not mean it's a science.
- AnnikaL 5mo ago
  Well, yes, but the courses I've taken for the computer science portion of my degree feel much more like math or engineering than science; experimental/empirical verification of natural facts are hardly present.
- XajniN 5mo ago
  > Are "climate science" and "computer science" not science? Computer science – applied mathematics Climate science – writing doom papers because they bring budget Did you use them as examples on purpose?

Papers like this should be called opinion surveys. Calling it a study is a disservice to science. As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science.

latexr 5mo ago

Edit: It’s becoming ever more increasingly common on HN to get downvotes for innocuous respectful posts. If you’re downvoting, I’d genuinely appreciate if you explained what is it that you find offensive about this post. You’re not going to hurt my feelings, I sincerely want to understand what it is that you see as transgressive so I can learn from it. Thank you. Another example which baffled me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48222383#48227701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48222383#48227701 > As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science. I appreciate Feynman’s contributions—and in fact have been recently revisiting the Messenger lectures—but that seems like an unnecessary jab. The use of “usually” is also a convenient cop-out which makes the remark meaningless because the speaker can pick and choose in any conversation so they always win.¹ I thought about it and picked the first thing which came to mind: Natural science. From Wikipedia²: > Natural science or empirical science is a branch of science concerned with the description, understanding, and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and reproducibility of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Seems pretty scientific to me. But alright, let’s check the article to give it a fair shot in context. The only time the word “science” comes up is “Social Sciences”. Again from Wikipedia³: > Social science (or the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, sociology, culturology, and political science. That’s a wide range. Are all of those “not science”? ¹ Assuming your rephrasing is accurate and not missing important context. ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science ³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science

eastbound 5mo ago
[flagged]
- latexr 5mo ago
  You lost me. As in, I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. Are you saying you don’t trust climate science but you would trust them if they declared some other branch of science which has nothing to do with them as being unscientific? What does one thing have to do with the other? Are you also saying medicine is not a science because doctors got it wrong about masks? Science isn’t about always being right, but about observation and experimentation to try to arrive at the truth and a deeper understanding. Can you name a single branch of science which has never got anything wrong ever? Your last paragraph is particularly confusing. Is your entire post sarcastic? And if so, which group exactly are you criticising?
  - eastbound 5mo ago
    Yes, I am saying that I don’t trust anyone who trusts obviously-bad science and requires me to believe it. Some parts of science became political. The goal seems to convince a population, not determine what is true or not. So if you extract one field which is extremely corrupt, with practices that would seem obvious to anyone who studied Stalin, which soils the ideas and principles of sciences, and another fields rejects the idea of denouncing the first field: that demonstrates that they are both politicized sciences. Covid science, climate science and social sciences all three ask you to “trust the science” and use authority to become right. Meanwhile a researcher who is funded by private companies for technical advances, generally produces good science. They don’t usually need to jail their opponents.
    - piva00 5mo ago
      > Meanwhile a researcher who is funded by private companies for technical advances, generally produces good science. They don’t usually need to jail their opponents. This is such an ideology-laden bullshit leap that it pushes you into the "not even wrong" category.

Mordisquitos 5mo ago

What a hollow dismissal of based on acrobatic leaps of semantics. The word 'study' is no sacred possession exclusive to the natural sciences, and there is nothing wrong with properly conducted surveys as a method in sociology, economics or psychology. If surveys targeting the very people responsible for optimising their businesses' productivity, with no incentive to falsify their conclusions, is good evidence. Without any other way to systematically measure the change in productivity across a plethora of different businesses implementing a four-day workweek, it is as good as it gets — much better than purely theoretical assumptions that productivity must have dropped. You can find the study here if you wish to critique its methods: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-026-07536-x

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
aeternum 5mo ago
I did read it, thus my comment. Did you actually read the methods? This is what you're defending: "Methods This study took a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews with n=15 industry leaders" .. "Participants were identified via media reports " .. "A total of n=15 key informants participated in this study" .. "Recent research into appropriate sample sizes for qualitative research found saturation typically occurs between 9 and 17 interviews and the researchers agreed that no fresh insights or themes arose after the twelfth interview in this study (Hennink & Kaiser, 2022)" The interviews contain invaluable insights such as: “adopting the 4DWW takes work” “Productivity up, waste removed” “Management -led/employee -driven,” “Train for leisure,” I stand by my statement.
- surgical_fire 5mo ago
  Standing by a plainly wrong statement does not make it right. A qualitative study is still a study, especially considering that the subjects of the study are the sort of people that can evaluate the thing being studied.
EasyMark 5mo ago

kibibu 5mo ago

> As Feynman said, anything where they have to put science as a suffix is usually not science. This is such an absurd thought-terminating cliche. Science suffixation seems more an indicator of the age of the field, not its scientific rigour. Are "climate science" and "computer science" not science? On the flip side, just because it says "ology" at the end of a word does not mean it's a science.

AnnikaL 5mo ago
Well, yes, but the courses I've taken for the computer science portion of my degree feel much more like math or engineering than science; experimental/empirical verification of natural facts are hardly present.
XajniN 5mo ago
> Are "climate science" and "computer science" not science? Computer science – applied mathematics Climate science – writing doom papers because they bring budget Did you use them as examples on purpose?