Lets talk about academic sociology

Lets talk about academic sociology.

In my experience as a college student, a lot of the sociology classes that I have sat in on (never taken one because I have a real major) were pretty piss poor. I have noticed that the following are pretty typical:

>Strong Biases
This is a pretty broad category. I have noticed that sociology profs often fail to tell the whole story or even address the counter to certain points that are obviously controversial. I have noticed that profs glaze over sections that they personally disagree with, my example for this is soci profs will literally skip the slide and categorically dismiss evolutionary psychology without even explaining it. This happened in two classes and I have heard of it happening in others. This is obviously a problem elsewhere but I think it is probably more acute in this dept.

>Bad Experiments
My example for this one is
>nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
This is an experiment that I have seen brought up in every sociology class. The problem is that it is literally 15 years old and hasn't been repeated. And there are at least a few other examples I can think of. The big problem here is that this experiment is considered foundational and it is used to "prove that racism exists"

I think that the main reason for the shit quality of sociology is the same as the reason that modern journalism is so shit. It doesn't attract the great minds and instead attracts the type of people who never would have even gone to college 20 years ago.

I don't know I might be wrong.

anything that uses Marxism as a serious line of analysis is going to be full of crazys and people with axes to grind.

>It doesn't attract the great minds and instead attracts the type of people who never would have even gone to college 20 years ago.

Well, way to /thread your own thread OP. You don't really need to "think" to become a sociologist, just pay for a degree and slob the knob of your professors until you land in the SPLC making meme statistics about the "wage gap" and the imminent domestic threat of frogposting.

I don't want to shit on the discipline but it has become increasingly obvious that most students of sociology are getting into debt to become a social justice warrior.

I'm not saying that an education in sociology is completely worthless but it isn't something you can typically use in a career and the standard of data required is often qualitative and increasingly interpretative.

At this stage I struggle to consider it a scientific pursuit.

t. riven main

Professor Gad Saad of Concordia University is a marketing and evolutionary psychologist and he basically has to field nonstop attacks from sociology academics because they are so triggered by the very concept of evolutionary psychology.

At this point it's not because they academically have proven him wrong it's almost 100℅ identity politics.

I think most people of a sound mind would basically agree with this, and there in lies the problem. Its a sort of vicious circle. The less it's perceived as a scientific pursuit, the less people of a scientific mind enter it, the less scientific it gets and so on. Its a hard thing to fix at this point.

The field has lacked purity for many decades now, maybe at one stage it was legitimate but now it is indistinguishable from activism.

That's what I'm getting at. It's an easily observable problem which presents a simple choice. Either try to take it back, or concede that it's impossible at this point and just let it go. Maybe playing the long game is a choice too, let it implode and rebuild from scratch in a few decades.

as a sociology major I find this thread to be piss poor quality STEM majors attempting to make themselves feel better about their life decisions.
one thing I can certainly say about sociology majors is at least they are grounded in reality.. nobody becomes a sociology major because they think it will make them a lot of money or gain them scientific merit

we join this field because we genuinely want to help people (society) but first we have to understand it. results still pending

>>I think that the main reason for the shit quality of sociology is the same as the reason that modern journalism is so shit. It doesn't attract the great minds and instead attracts the type of people who never would have even gone to college 20 years ago.

I once read an article that gave it a different spin, the problem it identified with sociology was that it was only attractive to people with a certain ideological background. While economy, law, philosophy are attractive to students and teachers from the whole political spectrum, therefore creating debate and discourse; sociology (and anthropology) is mostly populated by people that dont even question the validity of marxism, therefore most of the professionals of that area accept certain principles as a dogma.

people who blindly associate sociology (the entire goddamn practice) with Marxism fucking disgust me

have you even read and critically analyzed Marx? because structuralists think that he is trash and contemporary theory is very heavily split between marxist/neomarxist ideology and structural functionalist perspective

>sociology
communism studies

it only gets shit when the professor is too stupid to force his/her personal beliefs to the lessons.

>
1. Use a bunch of big words so no one can tell that are not making any good points
2. Call anyone who can't understand you an idiot
3. End everything in ism, this helps in creating big words

These are the principles on debating critical theory.

you brought up marx buddy and now you are upset that you don't understand the difference between Marx.. what marx wrote.. how marx's ideas actually carried out (marxism) and the splintering of his ideas into new ideas neo-marxism?

and you have the gall to criticize sociologists for not thinking critically?
wew fucking lad

no same poster

the same applies line of logic applies. I suggest you follow it

>making up isms
that isn't how that works. I didn't make up "marxism" marx's ideologies make up marxism. how they are practiced is completely different discussion

You have mastered rule #2

I am not sure what you mean

>While economy, law, philosophy are attractive to students and teachers from the whole political spectrum
Not sure about law, but I read a study that said there is some self-selection in economics too: it is full of people who are more selfish as students from other fields.

As for philosophy, maybe it has both people from the left and the right, but there is also a kind of self-selection going on. I know this triggers people, but you see few women in philosophy.

I don't doubt it that sociology and anthropology have their own culture and self-selection. Perhaps these two (sociology and anthropology) are exceptional. But I simply disagree that this doesn't apply to most fields.

What about standards of proof and impartiality?

OP has spotted flaws in your reasoning and is pointing it out to help you build a stronger case, but instead you get mad.

>1. Use a bunch of big words so no one can tell that are not making any good points

Oh for fuck's sake, we live in the age of the internet. Quit your crying and Google it you asshat.

Why don't you use some of that internet power to look up Sokal

>categorically dismiss evolutionary psychology without even explaining it.
not a fan of sociology but most of evolutionary psychology is pseudoscience and highly speculative

>we join this field because we genuinely want to help people (society) but first we have to understand it. results still pending
Wait a second fella why should studying society and wanting to improve society necessarily be joined at the hip at like that?

i go thereeee

>le science
>not just making things up

>evolutionary psychology
Lets be real that field is fucking trash though.

Because after social science came to be people thought finally they could socially engineer the world! But it didn't work. It didn't work at all. So the social sciences lost their main purpose again and were doomed irrelevant. But the already established academics didn't like that, so they shifted their focus onto something else: politics. E.g. Franz Boas the greatest anthropologist of all time, who never produced a single worthwhile theory but hey, he made people realize that racism is bad!
Social sciences became arts and their new purpose was to mediate political messages. Hence today the majority of sociologists and anthropologists focus on """""issues""""" of race, gender and power.
Science and truth doesn't matter, what matters is the political narrative.

>we join this field because we genuinely want to help people (society) but first we have to understand it. results still pending

Well maybe if you wanted to understand how society works you wouldn't use piss poor statistics to back up pre-established biases and have at least an ounce of academic rigour.

>but most of evolutionary psychology is pseudoscience and highly speculative

I agree with the highly speculative but I disagree with all of it being pseudoscience, it is a relatively new science so it will take a while to sort the crap from the good stuff, that's just how it works.

The solution is simple.

We encourage students to question interpretivist approaches and give more focus towards Empiricism in Sociology courses. Also, ensure that sociology students are reading the studies of right wing researchers as well as left leaning ones.

Sociologists are so shit that the only reason they remain in academia is for political reasons (which really comes through in their work). Social Scientists are the actual academic sociologists and they had to create an entirely new field to get the fuck away from the stupid fucks known as sociologists.

t. History major

Official social science rankings:

>God Tier
History (fuck you, I count it as socsci)
Archaeology
Linguistics

>Good Tier
Political Science
Geography


>Okay Tier
Economics
Criminology

>Piss Tier
Social psychology
Cultural anthropology

>Shit Tier
Sociology

>Three Letter Agency, State Dept, or Kill Myself Tier
________ studies

Let's talk about how absolutely hilarious it is for Veeky Forums hysterically to believe it's more educated on subject matter than universities

Hey when you have board with no barrier of entry you get boards like /t/v/ or Veeky Forums where anyone can spam the board with shit OP's and responses.

>it's above criticism, it's taught in a university you see!

Yeah actually. You can't throw dubious criticism at academics. Unfortunately for you, everything here isn't to believe uncritically. If you do, if you believe yourself over a university.

Hell, you're an American stereotype. You're afraid of universities.

There's rigor in universities though despite people stating the contrary.

It's like saying "you don't need certification to be a tradesman/ I don't need apprenticeships" because good luck getting anyone to hire your ass when you got no apprenticeship under your belt or to think that yes my DIYS experience is fully capable of arming me with workplace skills despite me having no experience in a tradie environment.

Hell the university system for masters and PHD's is based off the tradesmen/journeyman/guild system in Europe that had origins many centuries ago and still exists today in certain ways.

...

>History (fuck you, I count it as socsci)
It is...

seems alright