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Social science is science.
by schnuri 2y ago
Social science is science.
- zooq_ai 2y agoNo. Social Science almost always is done/funded by organizations / people who already have a set agenda. A Department of "Equity and Justice" will always fund research that fits their mission. Thanks to spurious correlation, you can make up anything. Many social science research are not reproducible. It's also done by people who aren't hard-core physicists or mathematicians, meaning they can't/won't do true multi-dimensional analysis and 2nd and 3rd order effects.
- __loam 2y ago"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
- bilbo0s 2y agomeaning they can't/won't do true multi-dimensional analysis and 2nd and 3rd order effects. Neither does any other researcher these days. Thus, the crisis of reproducibility in “peer reviewed” papers. Kind of disingenuous to single out social scientists for this practice. Probably a bit more wise to clean our own house first. Certainly unwise to be engaged in the very practices we’re attacking.
- DontchaKnowit 2y agoWhile you are correct about the hypocrisy, doesnt change their point
- bilbo0s 2y agoIt does make thinking people roll their eyes at the point however.
- DontchaKnowit 2y agoYoure being self aggrandizing. And look at me, being hypocritical. But my point stands.
- zooq_ai 2y agoSocial Scientists actually have a problem that they can't do true controlled experiments (unless they spin an alternate universe). So, they literally have to work with spurious correlations Physical Science and Math can be isolated enough to do controlled experiments
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nickpinkston 2y agoYea, because physical science is never funded by anyone with an agenda... That's at least what the American Petroleum Institute, the Tobacco Institute, the Beverage Institute, etc. tell us about climate change, smoking, and sugary drinks...
- zooq_ai 2y agoHuh? API, Tobacco all do Social Science. You are actually kind of proving my point.
- nickpinkston 2y agoThey all fund fake hard science research.
- aiauthoritydev 2y agoThe "fake" part mostly comes from the "social science" aspect.
- nickpinkston 2y agoI assure you that physical research includes questions like whether climate change is happening, smoking causes cancer, and excess sugar causes diabetes haha.
- aiauthoritydev 2y agoYou kind of prove the point previous person is trying to make. Hard science proved the tobacco leads to cancer, Social Sciences helped Tobacco companies get highest ESG ratings. Climate change is another of "not really science" fields mostly peddled by social sciences.
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago> It's also done by people who aren't hard-core physicists or mathematicians, meaning they can't/won't do true multi-dimensional analysis and 2nd and 3rd order effects. This is so incredibly insulting to entire fields of study. The whole backlash against anything vaguely DEI-related has really done a number on the coldly logical HN. Prejudice does exist and we are allowed to study it.
- zzzeek 2y agoThe same way all disease is studied by "doctors" who are deeply anti disease. You can't trust people with such a "set agenda"
- aiauthoritydev 2y agoHere is the rule of thumb. Does the "scientist" pay some serious price for being wrong ? Doctors lose business if they are not very good. Bakers lose business if they are not very good. Car mechanics lose business if they cant diagnose problems properly. The "ai safety", "bio ethicist", "gender justice researchers", "transrights researchers", "diversity officers" etc. pay no price of being wrong or peddling fake made up ideas, falsified data or pure nonsense. On the contrary more nonsense you can peddle higher you go in this field. Hence it is safe to assume a lot of these professions are full of fake, fraudulent individuals. PS. There are indeed good people in these fields but they are very few and hard to find.
- __loam 2y agoBio-ethics is an extremely important aspect of the field in most research involving human and animal subjects. When we don't know about bio-ethics, we do fucked up shit as a society like the Tuskeegee Syphilis Trial. We did gain useful medical knowledge from that study but it had a massive human cost, most of which was borne by a poor community mostly made up of one racial minority. When bio-ethicists get things wrong there is absolutely a horrific cost and when I did bio research I had to take an ethics course every 3 years.
- hpeter 2y agoLet's take a look at one of the definitions of science --------- Science noun The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. --------- It does not include where the funding or bias comes from. It also doesn't include if their explanations are correct or not. -------- social science noun The study of human society and of individual relationships in and to society. ...etc. -------- What you can do is (rightly) question their results, but can't say it's not science.
- zarathustreal 2y agoI’m gonna have to disagree. If the majority of your “science” isn’t reproducible then you really can’t call it science in any meaningful capacity. That’s not to say it isn’t valuable or helpful in some way but that’s not what’s in question. In fact, it’s not science in the same way that we’re not questioning whether it’s useful. Particularly, in the literal way.
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoWar is Peace.
- banannaise 2y agoIt can be, but it often isn't. It depends wildly on who is doing the work and how they're doing it (which, to be fair, can be true of other sciences, although the density of quacks appears to be much higher in the social sciences)
- aiauthoritydev 2y ago[flagged]
- aiauthoritydev 2y agoMay be and since this discussion can quickly spiral out of hand into flamewars I will not counter your claim anymore. My question was whether the scientists who are warning us are "social scientists" who study dubious areas of "scientific research" such as "AI safety" or are some real scientists who know how neural networks and who can write python code or use tensorflow to to run a linear regression.