Having worked in mechanical engineering and biomechanics, I also developed a certain skepticism with results in the "softer" (or "less controllable"?) sciences.

Having worked in mechanical engineering and biomechanics, I also developed a certain skepticism with results in the "softer" (or "less controllable"?) sciences. In biomechanics I often saw complete scattershot X-Y correlations, which after enough statistical dancing, were revealed to be "statistically significant" enough to be publishable, though they obviously had very little predictive power. I personally know how hard it is to isolate all factors and get a decent correlation, and that's just the way it is in medical science, but that's what gives me skepticism. In the "hard, controlled" sciences, generally if you can't see an obvious correlation by eye you already throw it out. Statistics are used to quantify just how powerful the correlation is, not to prove there is a correlation at all.