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On May 24 2016 05:21 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 04:55 Naracs_Duc wrote:On May 24 2016 04:52 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 04:48 oBlade wrote:On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote:You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this. I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility). Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head. What does that even mean? Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine. Not really. Science is more about actively testing a theory. Which is not to say you cannot engage in what would be "Social Science"; it is that a qualitative or quantitative look at the work that is currently encompassed within Social Science is not that. Instead it is that generally what is modern Social Science is more of a mixture of confirmation bias and advocacy that uses statistics and math to disguise what is actually going on.
So you're disagreeing with specific practices of specific scientists and not actually disagreeing with the study?
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The issue with defining what is and is not "real science" is the fact that different fields have different constraints. Let's take cell biology as an example. In cell biology, there are massive assumptions that are made, relative to what we would see in protein chemistry. For a protein chemist, some of the assumptions made by a cell biologist may seem too broad. To them, cell biology feels less like science than protein chemistry. But then that protein chemist talks to a materials chemist. Suddenly, the protein chemist is the one making wild assumptions and isn't nearly scientific. But all of them are scientists doing science.
However, the truth is, people find some very creative ways to determine cause/effect relationships. It is easy to look down on fields as simplistic, but there are actually a lot of ways that people are determining information.
When a scientist looks at the data from social science experiments, it is easy to point out the trillions of things that weren't controlled for. As a chemist, I can pretty much control my experiments at the atomic level since most of my work is with materials. So a social science experiment has millions of assumptions. But it's not like they can do any better. You can't just clone 600 people and put them on 600 identical planets. It is still worth pursuing the knowledge we can, even if we aren't getting the detail we could get in other fields. We should always be striving to improve our knowledge/understanding and if the best we can get in social science isn't nearly as "exact" as chemistry, who cares. They are still doing good work and contributing to human understanding.
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On May 24 2016 03:20 SolaR- wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 03:07 Lord Tolkien wrote:On May 24 2016 03:06 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote:
Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless. Social sciences are not true science either. In what way. Social sciences do not go through the same rigorous testing that hard sciences do. Also, in social sciences you are dealing with unquantifiable data where absolute truth cannot be obtained. Social science will never reach the precision of the hard sciences. 2+2 always equals 4. Social science is more relative. Here is a decent article on the subject: blogs.scientificamerican.com
Being more relative doesn't make it "not a proper science". In fact, that blog you linked to, which I don't entirely agree with, but is generic enough to get its point across, ends with:
In spite of its weaknesses, social science—when applied wisely—can do even more than the hard sciences to make the world a better place. Comte was right about that.
So social sciences using different methodologies from "hard science" doesn't really say much about it not being a science. It's still perfectly possible to apply the scientific method in social sciences, just as it is in engineering. One just doesn't try to discover universal truths about the universe, but about a model that works in a specific situation. Or a useful abstraction that while not strictly true on a small scale, at a macro scale does a good job of capturing behaviour (under certain conditions). And there is nothing wrong, or unscientific about that.
At the videos, Feynman is assuming that getting to "laws" is the end goal of science, which is simply not true. As for his nonsense babble about organic foods, he has a point, but it has nothing to do with social science. He also erects quite a strawman of social science. I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say with Chomsky's video. He isn't saying that social science isn't a science either. In fact, he seems to be making more fun of "hard sciences" than anything else (which is approrpiate, because he's a linguist: neither a social scientist nor a STEM scientist).
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On May 24 2016 05:21 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 04:55 Naracs_Duc wrote:On May 24 2016 04:52 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 04:48 oBlade wrote:On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote:You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this. I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility). Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head. What does that even mean? Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine. Not really. Science is more about actively testing a theory. Which is not to say you cannot engage in what would be "Social Science"; it is that a qualitative or quantitative look at the work that is currently encompassed within Social Science is not that. Instead it is that generally what is modern Social Science is more of a mixture of confirmation bias and advocacy that uses statistics and math to disguise what is actually going on.
Spoken as someone who has only read the Daily Mail version of social science reporting.
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On May 24 2016 05:23 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 05:21 cLutZ wrote:On May 24 2016 04:55 Naracs_Duc wrote:On May 24 2016 04:52 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 04:48 oBlade wrote:On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote:You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this. I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility). Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head. What does that even mean? Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine. Not really. Science is more about actively testing a theory. Which is not to say you cannot engage in what would be "Social Science"; it is that a qualitative or quantitative look at the work that is currently encompassed within Social Science is not that. Instead it is that generally what is modern Social Science is more of a mixture of confirmation bias and advocacy that uses statistics and math to disguise what is actually going on. So you're disagreeing with specific practices of specific scientists and not actually disagreeing with the study?
Unless you are talking about this: https://www.aauw.org/files/2015/03/Solving-the-Equation-report-nsa.pdf I don't know what study you are talking about. I would apply the moniker of "Confirmation Bias/Advocacy veiled in statistics" to this one, yes. The thing is, you entered the fray with this:
On May 24 2016 03:16 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote:
Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless. This absurdly hilarious to me.
You haven't linked to studies since so I don't know what you are talking about.
On May 24 2016 05:34 Mohdoo wrote:
The issue with defining what is and is not "real science" is the fact that different fields have different constraints. Let's take cell biology as an example. In cell biology, there are massive assumptions that are made, relative to what we would see in protein chemistry. For a protein chemist, some of the assumptions made by a cell biologist may seem too broad. To them, cell biology feels less like science than protein chemistry. But then that protein chemist talks to a materials chemist. Suddenly, the protein chemist is the one making wild assumptions and isn't nearly scientific. But all of them are scientists doing science.
However, the truth is, people find some very creative ways to determine cause/effect relationships. It is easy to look down on fields as simplistic, but there are actually a lot of ways that people are determining information.
When a scientist looks at the data from social science experiments, it is easy to point out the trillions of things that weren't controlled for. As a chemist, I can pretty much control my experiments at the atomic level since most of my work is with materials. So a social science experiment has millions of assumptions. But it's not like they can do any better. You can't just clone 600 people and put them on 600 identical planets. It is still worth pursuing the knowledge we can, even if we aren't getting the detail we could get in other fields. We should always be striving to improve our knowledge/understanding and if the best we can get in social science isn't nearly as "exact" as chemistry, who cares. They are still doing good work and contributing to human understanding.
One criticism of much of social science is that they are not doing that. That there are simple (or simpler), intuitive reasons for most of the things they discuss, but those simple ideas are hand waved away in favor of the explanation that suits the world view of the social scientist.
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On May 24 2016 05:38 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 05:21 cLutZ wrote:On May 24 2016 04:55 Naracs_Duc wrote:On May 24 2016 04:52 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 04:48 oBlade wrote:On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote:You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this. I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility). Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head. What does that even mean? Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine. Not really. Science is more about actively testing a theory. Which is not to say you cannot engage in what would be "Social Science"; it is that a qualitative or quantitative look at the work that is currently encompassed within Social Science is not that. Instead it is that generally what is modern Social Science is more of a mixture of confirmation bias and advocacy that uses statistics and math to disguise what is actually going on. Spoken as someone who has only read the Daily Mail version of social science reporting.
We have sort of come to the root problem with this discussion, that it is all focused around a stawman of social sciences, rather than addressing the fields on a case by case basis.
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On May 24 2016 05:38 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 05:21 cLutZ wrote:On May 24 2016 04:55 Naracs_Duc wrote:On May 24 2016 04:52 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 04:48 oBlade wrote:On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote:You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this. I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility). Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head. What does that even mean? Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine. Not really. Science is more about actively testing a theory. Which is not to say you cannot engage in what would be "Social Science"; it is that a qualitative or quantitative look at the work that is currently encompassed within Social Science is not that. Instead it is that generally what is modern Social Science is more of a mixture of confirmation bias and advocacy that uses statistics and math to disguise what is actually going on. Spoken as someone who has only read the Daily Mail version of social science reporting.
Well, if he works in a physical science field, it is pretty easy to come to that conclusion. Fact of the matter is, social science is significantly gimped in terms of analytical techniques. Spectroscopy? Nope? Anything else physical science uses? Nope. Social science does rely on a ton on statistical analysis and other "indirect" methods of study. However, it is still a study and is still contributing information. It is still science, even if the researchers lose the ability to use a lot of great techniques.
So while I think Clutz is both right and wrong, I think it is important to separate what really is a physical limitation in social science. But those limitations don't make the science less valid as science, it just isn't nearly as detailed.
Hell, in chemistry, we used to characterize compounds by taste, feel, smell etc. That was still science, it was just using some less than ideal techniques.
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On May 24 2016 05:41 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 05:23 Naracs_Duc wrote:On May 24 2016 05:21 cLutZ wrote:On May 24 2016 04:55 Naracs_Duc wrote:On May 24 2016 04:52 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 04:48 oBlade wrote:On May 24 2016 04:26 LegalLord wrote:You know, there's an entire branch of philosophy that is in a large part devoted to trying to explain what is science, and what isn't. If anyone is interested, here's something to read about.Personally I find this kind of discussion (what field can we discredit out-of-hand just because it isn't a real science?) to be sort of pointless. We're not going to get anywhere like this. I think the point should be that calling your field a "science" isn't a credential per se. Saying something's not a hard science doesn't necessitate that the field has little to no value or can't produce useful knowledge. That might be true, but it would be for other reasons (reasons that might be related to people wanting to call the field a science as a bid for credibility). Exactly, i think this hits the nail on the head. What does that even mean? Science is ticking down notes when collecting data points and then analyzing those data points to make a conclusions or predictions. It shouldn't matter if you're watching ducks mate, recording titrations, or listening to people tell you an account of their experience. Data points are data points. To treat one as more than the other and even brining "credibility" of a field into play is completely asinine. Not really. Science is more about actively testing a theory. Which is not to say you cannot engage in what would be "Social Science"; it is that a qualitative or quantitative look at the work that is currently encompassed within Social Science is not that. Instead it is that generally what is modern Social Science is more of a mixture of confirmation bias and advocacy that uses statistics and math to disguise what is actually going on. So you're disagreeing with specific practices of specific scientists and not actually disagreeing with the study? Unless you are talking about this: https://www.aauw.org/files/2015/03/Solving-the-Equation-report-nsa.pdf I don't know what study you are talking about. I would apply the moniker of "Confirmation Bias/Advocacy veiled in statistics" to this one, yes. The thing is, you entered the fray with this: Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 03:16 Naracs_Duc wrote:On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote:
Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless. This absurdly hilarious to me. You haven't linked to studies since so I don't know what you are talking about. Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 05:34 Mohdoo wrote:
The issue with defining what is and is not "real science" is the fact that different fields have different constraints. Let's take cell biology as an example. In cell biology, there are massive assumptions that are made, relative to what we would see in protein chemistry. For a protein chemist, some of the assumptions made by a cell biologist may seem too broad. To them, cell biology feels less like science than protein chemistry. But then that protein chemist talks to a materials chemist. Suddenly, the protein chemist is the one making wild assumptions and isn't nearly scientific. But all of them are scientists doing science.
However, the truth is, people find some very creative ways to determine cause/effect relationships. It is easy to look down on fields as simplistic, but there are actually a lot of ways that people are determining information.
When a scientist looks at the data from social science experiments, it is easy to point out the trillions of things that weren't controlled for. As a chemist, I can pretty much control my experiments at the atomic level since most of my work is with materials. So a social science experiment has millions of assumptions. But it's not like they can do any better. You can't just clone 600 people and put them on 600 identical planets. It is still worth pursuing the knowledge we can, even if we aren't getting the detail we could get in other fields. We should always be striving to improve our knowledge/understanding and if the best we can get in social science isn't nearly as "exact" as chemistry, who cares. They are still doing good work and contributing to human understanding.
One criticism of much of social science is that they are not doing that. That there are simple (or simpler), intuitive reasons for most of the things they discuss, but those simple ideas are hand waved away in favor of the explanation that suits the world view of the social scientist.
Wow, you're really wandering off the reservation here... I'm sorry.
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The problem with social science is simple, its extremly politically loaded.
Findings that don't fit into the narrative are disregarded (or shouted death) and many studies seem more to be done to strenghten some agenda and not to come closer to some "truth".
I'm sure there is also tons of serious work done there (i hope so), but often it doesn't exactly look like that.
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On May 24 2016 05:41 cLutZ wrote:
One criticism of much of social science is that they are not doing that. That there are simple (or simpler), intuitive reasons for most of the things they discuss, but those simple ideas are hand waved away in favor of the explanation that suits the world view of the social scientist.
I think it depends. In some instances, in my eyes, social science steps too far out of reason. There are times where the thing they are trying to determine is simply not determinable within a reasonable amount of certainty. And so they do the best they've got. Sometimes the best they've got is decent and sometimes the best they've got is terrible. While I would agree that sometimes they try to publish papers about things that are perhaps "unknowable" currently, I think that is not likely the bulk of work.
But let's take schizophrenia for example. We have a good idea as to what schizophrenia looks like. How about a chemical mechanism for development of schizophrenia? Not even close. But can we still say a ton of valuable things about Schizophrenia? Definitely. It's all about properly framing what the goals/capabilities of a given study are. As long as those are properly defined, I don't see the issue. Is the social scientist talking big just because it is the best data out there? Or are they being realistic about what the data suggests and what it does not suggest?
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On May 24 2016 05:48 Velr wrote:
The problem with social science is simple, its extremly politically loaded.
Findings that don't fit into the narrative are disregarded (or shouted death) and many studies seem more to be done to strenghten some agenda and not to come closer to some "truth".
I'm sure there is also tons of serious work done there (i hope so), but often it doesn't exactly look like that.
That is a problem for straight up science as well. If it wasn’t we would have had the endless studies coming from the US about how climate change isn’t real. Science is not immune to political manipulation.
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On May 24 2016 03:20 SolaR- wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 03:07 Lord Tolkien wrote:On May 24 2016 03:06 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote:
Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless. Social sciences are not true science either. In what way. Social sciences do not go through the same rigorous testing that hard sciences do. Also, in social sciences you are dealing with unquantifiable data where absolute truth cannot be obtained. Social science will never reach the precision of the hard sciences. 2+2 always equals 4. Social science is more relative. Here is a decent article on the subject: blogs.scientificamerican.com
First and foremost, that is a blog (and an opinion piece) and not a published article. The argument is noted, and the blog even offers an interesting view (social engineering as opposed to social science), but the premises are flawed. First, that it presupposes that science is about finding absolute truth: the fundamental basis of western scientific epistemology is that, in no case, can any scientist claim to have discovered absolute truth, as to do so would invalidate the entirety of the epistemology (and the scientific method) they have based their research upon. The best they can claim is, under our best models and theoretical framework, and using the following data and conditionals, we arrive at X conclusion.
For instance, let's use physics. Newtonian physics is fundamentally wrong. The theoretical framework that Newton's theory of gravity, and the various laws and equations that are derived from it, falls apart upon the introduction of relativity. An yet we still teach and utilize Newtownian physics, and the equations ultimately derived from an incorrect model, for remaining highly useful in the vast majority of non-relativistic cases. Meanwhile, we are still attempting to reconcile the relativistic model with quantum mechanics and string theory. Nonetheless, we still utilize these models knowing full well that they contradict (and have yet to reconcile them). Right now, it doesn't matter at all if they're true, only that they work.
Secondly, he makes the claim that in the social sciences, nothing can possibly be proven because all human beings are different. This is, quite frankly, highly suspect reasoning at best, and utter hogwash in all reality. Can we not say the same thing about animals ultimately being all different and having different life experiences? Unless the argument is that humans are special and human behavior cannot be modeled like animal behavior in ecology/biology in large sample sizes, this line of reasoning is, really, highly specious. Moreover, we need simply look at string theory at fields of "hard" science for fields that almost entirely theoretical, with none/little observable basis to back up the existence of such a framework besides a lot of computers doing a lot of maths.
On May 24 2016 03:21 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 03:07 Lord Tolkien wrote:On May 24 2016 03:06 SolaR- wrote:On May 24 2016 02:37 Ghostcom wrote:
Social Science is a Scientific Field. Woman studies is not. It is at best a sub-specialty.
If the statement that "every country is misogynistic" is true, then so is "every country is misandric" as males occupy the extremes when it comes to almost all applicable parameters. Painting with such a broad brush is pretty much useless. Social sciences are not true science either. In what way. Here are a couple soundbytes that capture the gist of why social science is in a different class of rigor from the natural sciences: + Show Spoiler +
I am asking you to define what constitutes a "true" science, not give long out-dated soundbytes of pithy yet unproven statements and, ultimately, deflections.
In essence, I'm asking you what a science is (or fundamentally, what is scientific epistemology), and, from that starting point, hope to logically derive the view that "social sciences" cannot be considered a science from it.
An application of the Socratic method.
On May 24 2016 03:22 ticklishmusic wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 03:14 Lord Tolkien wrote:
I did not ask you to give me a strawman, Plansix. You're just detracting from what I would like to accomplish here.
At the moment, I would like SolaR- (or anyone else who believes something to this effect) to define, as rigorously and accurately as possible, his view of what constitutes a "true" scientific field. I would say "hard" sciences where data is quantified/collected in a very rigorous way, variables are accounted/ controlled for, hypotheses are tested, results can be replicated by using the same protocols, and with minimal reliance on frameworks.
So we cannot use cell theory or germ theory, for instance, as the basis of our understanding and modeling of, say, vaccine creation? Theories and frameworks form the fundamental basis of all scientific knowledge, to exclude it as part of a definition of science, when the goal of science is to establish working theoretical models to understand phenomena (natural or human), seems dangerous.
In any event, under this definition, most (if not all) social sciences fall under the category of science nowadays. Economics especially (and indeed the primary criticism of the field by the heterodox schools is that mainstream economics is far too empirically minded), but sociology. psychology, etc. all at present work empirically. Good sociological studies follow the scientific method as scrupulously as possible. Indeed, a reading of Durkheim's Suicide should dispel the notion that sociology can't readily follow scientific epistemology.
It is social science (well, specific economics) departments which are currently innovating new applications of statistical approaches and analysis, after all.
Honestly, all I can think of every time people make this claim is this comic:
https://xkcd.com/435/
I would also advise anyone who seriously considers this topic a relevant distinction to make to revisit the philosophical underpinnings of science itself, and that the basis of science and mathematics is entirely theoretical and non-observable in the physical world.
EDIT:
On May 24 2016 05:48 Velr wrote:
The problem with social science is simple, its extremly politically loaded.
Findings that don't fit into the narrative are disregarded (or shouted death) and many studies seem more to be done to strenghten some agenda and not to come closer to some "truth".
I'm sure there is also tons of serious work done there (i hope so), but often it doesn't exactly look like that.
Are you going to provide an example or show that this is either limited to social science as a field or that this is necessarily indicative that a field is not science?
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On May 24 2016 05:48 Velr wrote:
The problem with social science is simple, its extremly politically loaded.
Findings that don't fit into the narrative are disregarded (or shouted death) and many studies seem more to be done to strenghten some agenda and not to come closer to some "truth".
I'm sure there is also tons of serious work done there (i hope so), but often it doesn't exactly look like that.
Well, Kuhn, and more radically Feyerabend argue that all science works in exactly that manner. It's not as if people welcomed Galileo, Darwin, Mendel, or Wegener's ideas at the time. And who knows what theory (like the digital universe or various weird flavours of quantum gravity) "hard scientists" are discarding as nonsense without properly studying (cold fusion maybe?).
E: Man, I forgot global warming. Probably most of the people claiming Social Science is unscientific here also think there is no such thing as anthropogenic global warming.
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On May 24 2016 02:25 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2016 22:59 WhiteDog wrote:There's an entire body of literature on the subject. The short answer with respect to policy is: yes, most notably with regards to policies impacting specifically women, children and families. Having women in leadership positions also helps negate restrictive gender stereotypes about the roles of women in society. There's bullshit litterature on many subjects. You're telling me the core arguments for women in politics are contradictory : they negate "restrictive" (whatever that mean) gender stereotypes, but mainly play a role in what is traditionally considered to be women subjects (familly, children). A rich woman is rich before all, and it is this reality that define her political stances. Gender or race diversity is used as some kind of way to legitimate our ploutocratic democracy and the election of specific individuals that are, more often than not, originating from rich families. Hence the reason why the left and the right both love diversity. That's a very different object of study, and different norms are at play. And yet it's the same theorical argument. What matters is how it has changed over time. And it appears to have been growing in several fields over the last few decades. If it is abnormally low, and increase but still stays below the norm, it can be argued that its a specificity of the US more than anything. In France, women in stem related courses account for at least 20 % of student in 2000, up to 40 %, with 25 % on average and we're not particularly advanced. I believe this is you looking at the world through your class warfare goggles. There's no reason a rich woman should be rich before all, and not woman before all, or bike rider before all if that happens to be her hobby. In fact, the whole "before all" is a red herring. She is rich, and a woman, and a bike rider, and a soccer mom, and makes decisions based on all these factors, as well as her ideology. Oh, and dismissing an entire scientific field (woman studies) because it doesn't agree with your world view is extremely myopic.
Woman studies lol. Gender studies actually, modern sociology don't study a gender, but "genders" (plural), as in the relationship between "genders", one being defined not in itself but in the relationship it has in relation to the other. I don't think too highly of those "studies". There are brilliant pieces on genders that dates back to 1960 up to say 1990-2000 and all, but modern gender studies is basically politics hidden in scientific discourse (and what a boring discourse).
You are absolutly right that I am kinda biased, as we are talking about politics. I understand kwizach point, it's just that from my point of view it is the desire for equality that, oftentime, is forgotten behind the discourse on diversity (more female, more latinos, more X, etc. is a way for an institution to legitimize itself, which is why you have diversity program even in harvard).
By the way, the social construct of reality is an amazing book.
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On May 24 2016 06:00 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 02:25 Acrofales wrote:On May 23 2016 22:59 WhiteDog wrote:There's an entire body of literature on the subject. The short answer with respect to policy is: yes, most notably with regards to policies impacting specifically women, children and families. Having women in leadership positions also helps negate restrictive gender stereotypes about the roles of women in society. There's bullshit litterature on many subjects. You're telling me the core arguments for women in politics are contradictory : they negate "restrictive" (whatever that mean) gender stereotypes, but mainly play a role in what is traditionally considered to be women subjects (familly, children). A rich woman is rich before all, and it is this reality that define her political stances. Gender or race diversity is used as some kind of way to legitimate our ploutocratic democracy and the election of specific individuals that are, more often than not, originating from rich families. Hence the reason why the left and the right both love diversity. That's a very different object of study, and different norms are at play. And yet it's the same theorical argument. What matters is how it has changed over time. And it appears to have been growing in several fields over the last few decades. If it is abnormally low, and increase but still stays below the norm, it can be argued that its a specificity of the US more than anything. In France, women in stem related courses account for at least 20 % of student in 2000, up to 40 %, with 25 % on average and we're not particularly advanced. I believe this is you looking at the world through your class warfare goggles. There's no reason a rich woman should be rich before all, and not woman before all, or bike rider before all if that happens to be her hobby. In fact, the whole "before all" is a red herring. She is rich, and a woman, and a bike rider, and a soccer mom, and makes decisions based on all these factors, as well as her ideology. Oh, and dismissing an entire scientific field (woman studies) because it doesn't agree with your world view is extremely myopic. Woman studies lol.
I have not taken a class in any gender, sexuality, or feminist studies. However, I have utilized feminist modes and frames of analysis before, and I see the value and utility of applying post-structuralist critical theories of gender and sexuality into the study of history and other facets of the humanities, and to argue that gender and sexuality do not play a key component of human behavior and the psyche is dubious.
I see nothing wrong with the field, in principle.
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I'm not sure amuses me more, when people here get in a math/science tizzy or when they try to discuss women. When they manage to discuss both at the same time it's pure awesome though
If someone could comment on the intersectionality that black women scientists navigate through that would make an excellent cherry on top
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On May 24 2016 06:10 GreenHorizons wrote:
I'm not sure amuses me more, when people here get in a math/science tizzy or when they try to discuss women. When they manage to discuss both at the same time it's pure awesome though
Your comment about everyone on TL being a huge math nerd and pouncing on the topic like the only girl at the party hold true to this day. And the discussions about women/sexism always start and end in the exact same place, no matter how many times we go over the same points. And the women's studies meme continues to be a thing.
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On May 24 2016 06:08 Lord Tolkien wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 06:00 WhiteDog wrote:On May 24 2016 02:25 Acrofales wrote:On May 23 2016 22:59 WhiteDog wrote:There's an entire body of literature on the subject. The short answer with respect to policy is: yes, most notably with regards to policies impacting specifically women, children and families. Having women in leadership positions also helps negate restrictive gender stereotypes about the roles of women in society. There's bullshit litterature on many subjects. You're telling me the core arguments for women in politics are contradictory : they negate "restrictive" (whatever that mean) gender stereotypes, but mainly play a role in what is traditionally considered to be women subjects (familly, children). A rich woman is rich before all, and it is this reality that define her political stances. Gender or race diversity is used as some kind of way to legitimate our ploutocratic democracy and the election of specific individuals that are, more often than not, originating from rich families. Hence the reason why the left and the right both love diversity. That's a very different object of study, and different norms are at play. And yet it's the same theorical argument. What matters is how it has changed over time. And it appears to have been growing in several fields over the last few decades. If it is abnormally low, and increase but still stays below the norm, it can be argued that its a specificity of the US more than anything. In France, women in stem related courses account for at least 20 % of student in 2000, up to 40 %, with 25 % on average and we're not particularly advanced. I believe this is you looking at the world through your class warfare goggles. There's no reason a rich woman should be rich before all, and not woman before all, or bike rider before all if that happens to be her hobby. In fact, the whole "before all" is a red herring. She is rich, and a woman, and a bike rider, and a soccer mom, and makes decisions based on all these factors, as well as her ideology. Oh, and dismissing an entire scientific field (woman studies) because it doesn't agree with your world view is extremely myopic. Woman studies lol. I have not taken a class in any gender, sexuality, or feminist studies. However, I have utilized feminist modes and frames of analysis before, and I see the value and utility of applying post-structuralist critical theories of gender and sexuality into the study of history and other facets of the humanities, and to argue that gender and sexuality do not play a key component of human behavior and the psyche is dubious. I see nothing wrong with the field, in principle.
You might agree with me that gender, sexuality and "feminist" studies (to me feminist studies is an oxymoron but whatever) is a very broad vision. There are a lot of things behind all that, some are brilliant, some are decent and valuable to understand certain aspect of our society, others are complete shit. The problem is that the shit part of those studies tend to gain power for various reasons (mainly that the field is almost entirely dominated by women and that, for some reasons that has a lot to do with the modern media, the field overvalue radical thinking rather than nuanced, limited and thought-out approach).
I am asking you to define what constitutes a "true" science, not give long out-dated soundbytes of pithy yet unproven statements and, ultimately, deflections.
In essence, I'm asking you what a science is (or fundamentally, what is scientific epistemology), and, from that starting point, hope to logically derive the view that "social sciences" cannot be considered a science from it.
I can answer this but I'll be boring and almost impossible to understand due to my lack of vocabulary in english lol.
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On May 24 2016 05:55 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2016 05:48 Velr wrote:
The problem with social science is simple, its extremly politically loaded.
Findings that don't fit into the narrative are disregarded (or shouted death) and many studies seem more to be done to strenghten some agenda and not to come closer to some "truth".
I'm sure there is also tons of serious work done there (i hope so), but often it doesn't exactly look like that. That is a problem for straight up science as well. If it wasn’t we would have had the endless studies coming from the US about how climate change isn’t real. Science is not immune to political manipulation.
What studies are these? I haven't read any American scientific studies that have been published in credible journals that actually reject climate change; of course, there are plenty of non-scientists running around claiming it's a myth, but I don't see that much politicking in science. I'd assume that the scientific community and peer review process would self-regulate pretty well.
I guess there's the occasional Creationist/ IDer who is lying for religious/ political/ financial reasons when it comes to a topic like evolution, but they're ostracized quite explicitly by the scientific community, so it's not like the scientific process or community is really failing at catching them.
I find the bigger issue to be that Americans don't listen to the scientific community when it comes to science, not that the scientific community is partisan or unreliable.
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So we cannot use cell theory or germ theory, for instance, as the basis of our understanding and modeling of, say, vaccine creation? Theories and frameworks form the fundamental basis of all scientific knowledge, to exclude it as part of a definition of science, when the goal of science is to establish working theoretical models to understand phenomena (natural or human), seems dangerous.
In any event, under this definition, most (if not all) social sciences fall under the category of science nowadays. Economics especially (and indeed the primary criticism of the field by the heterodox schools is that mainstream economics is far too empirically minded), but sociology. psychology, etc. all at present work empirically. Good sociological studies follow the scientific method as scrupulously as possible. Indeed, a reading of Durkheim's Suicide should dispel the notion that sociology can't readily follow scientific epistemology.
It is social science (well, specific economics) departments which are currently innovating new applications of statistical approaches and analysis, after all.
I think you're misinterpreting what I said, and note I said minimal reliance. I'm referring to theories that aren't hypothesis driven. Cell theory and germ theory are old as shit too, so I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make with them. The germ theory of disease states that some diseases are caused by micro organisms-- this is not a particularly useful statement, though Koch's postulates are a refinement upon this observation that can be applied in a scientific way. Observatory statements/ theories like cell theory and germ theory have great value, but ultimately (as the goal should be) we move to an empirical test of these generalizations and base future research and knowledge on our empirical findings instead of that. Germ theory and cell theory were developed to an extent by groping in the dark and describing an object that we couldn't see; with modern techniques we've flipped on the lights and can fully observe. If you can never flip on the lights, then...
There's a lot of statistics and modeling in the biological sciences. I wouldn't say it's behind economics by any means.
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EPT
