Why do STEMfags believe that social sciences aren't real sciences? We follow the scientific method...

Social sciences actually fail at all the points you're trying to defend them on. A naïve positivist approach to social sciences is flawed.
I certainly don't think they're pointless. I would agree that they're not real sciences in the same way as say physics or chemistry but they're still important.

>muh transcendent knowledge
hocus pocus

KYS

We don't think social sciences aren't sciences. We just think your interchangeable and ambiguous terminology which applies loosely to anything and directly to nothing, coupled with your frequent dismissal of the possibilities of conirmation bias, and your terrible attempts at controlling experimental variables, are all laughable.

As someone who's read his way through every major psychologist and many more, the field is a bullshitting contest and nothing more.

>We
>your

The replication crisis shows just how shoddy the social sciences are. When 90-95% of faculties are left/far left, groupthink and pushing politically useful results is unavoidable. Ego depletion, stereotype threat, implicit-association tests, unconscious thought theory, the list goes on. All of it is bullshit.

And there is evidence that this bullshit is not simply the result of sloppy practices, but outright fraud (see "Internal conceptual replications do not increase independent replication success").

And it continues. Any discipline that allows blatant trash like this science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6219/262 to be published is a complete joke.

>tfw @realpeerreview got doxxed by tenured social science colleagues
>tfw another popped right back up

>science.sciencemag
Boaty mcboatface.

>blatant trash
>published in Science
>Science

Plebs who know nothing shouldn't have opinions

I don't see your point. Just because it's in a prestigious journal it must be high quality research? Have you actually read the paper (its enormous methodological faults are glaringly obvious) or are you just guessing?

>(its enormous methodological faults are glaringly obvious)
So what are they? or is it just your empty contrarian posturing?

Some of us do but your typical scientism advocate doesn't, even though the social sciences even existing helps make a case for scientism.

I'll quote Scott Alexander, because he put it perfectly:

>Imagine a study with the following methodology. You survey a bunch of people to get their perceptions of who is a smoker (“97% of his close friends agree Bob smokes”). Then you correlate those numbers with who gets lung cancer. Your statistics program lights up like a Christmas tree with a bunch of super-strong correlations. You conclude “Perception of being a smoker causes lung cancer”, and make up a theory about how negative stereotypes of smokers cause stress which depresses the immune system. The media reports that as “Smoking Doesn’t Cause Cancer, Stereotypes Do”.

>This is the basic principle behind Leslie et al (2015).

This is not an exaggeration.

And as for why such a paper can get published, it's obvious. It fits the far left narrative about women in academia. Who cares about figuring out the truth when you can be On The Right Side Of History?

One day, I'll ask for an opinion on Veeky Forums and won't get a copy-pasted answer from a blog. It's nice when your opinions are being ready-made for you, isn't it?

you lose

Any """""""""""""""""science""""""""""""""""" that isn't physics is just handwavey, soft-science bullshit.

>I'll quote Scott Alexander

you still lose

Whoah what an insightful conclusion, that one could potentially misrepresent data or influence the process through which it is acquired to further one's interests or narrative.

And it's not like this can happen in any fucking area of science, too, only in Social Sciences! Strong argument, impossible to debunk really.

social sciences are especially vulnerable to such misrepresentation because their area of study directly relates to the social interests/narratives that many groups push.

there is no need to be so upset, friend.

I'm not who you think I am. And Scott Alexander is the worst human being ever.
>inb4 butthurt feminist detected
I'm not a feminist.

so what, you suck

Here's the paper in case anyone wants to actually read it: slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/l_paper.pdf

Why the hell can't we post pdfs on Veeky Forums like we can on Veeky Forums, anyway?

Not nearly as much as Scott Alexander.

Virginity

if you take this comment with a grain of salt and less snark, I'd say it's how most view it.

a lot of social sciences are explored to their fullest extent because of obvious issues in doing so via experimentation. the same issue does not tend to apply to physics or chemistry. it's probably just the point that there's a lot of ambiguity. I for one don't think it's a science in the same way that mathematics or chemistry is, but that doesn't mean it is not important.

>science
>existing in the first place

>social sciences are especially vulnerable to such misrepresentation because their area of study directly relates to the social interests/narratives

Any study will have interests/narratives, when there's money involved, you silly silly man. It's up to the reader to read the raw data and reach his own conclusions. With Social Sciences it's no different.

Your view is too infantile, as is this
>there is no need to be so upset, friend.

I'm not upset, your argument is just plain weak.

>pretending to not be upset because I called you out on it.

Stay rustled amigo

>Why do STEMfags believe that social sciences aren't real sciences?

Sokal affair

>that's not really possible with something like mathematics or engineering

Guess who "loses" now?

Stay in negation, bebê

I'm always in negation.

>Thinking the Sokal Affair was about social science and not 'cultural studies' ie. Critical theory ie. Postmodern philosophy trash.

In the modern day psychology has a fairly large amount of crossover with neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, genetics etc. For my cog/psych degree I had to do 2 semesters of physics just cuz, plus 2 of programming, 5 that were just about methods, and numerous calc/stats etc.

Liberal arts are no longer respectable thanks to critical theory.

Psychology is still a soft science, nowhere near on par with legitimate medicine. Psychology grads are almost universally med school washouts or dunces going for an easy diploma.

Social sciences aren't really science, but they're useful and interesting.
I don't understand why people are so insecure about what they're studying that they need this "science" validation stamp.

Social sciences intend to be science; they conduct experiments, follow the scientific method, etc. If they are indeed "not really science," then they have failed in their goal. It has nothing to do with 'insecurity' or 'validation.'

STEMfags don't realize social scientists in 2016 literally spend all their time doing statistical analysis of hundres of variables of the population.

they don't realize you have to avoid atomizing people in a study

they don't realize you can't do a study on humans behaviour in a lab, even with a focus group and controls.

they don't realize how much harder it is to explain human activity than a few fucking chemicals

I only took a couple social science courses, but knew people who took lots more. Most of them made no distinction between social science and postmodernist theory. The one existed to confirm the other.

Postmodernist theory is flawless though.

you base your "science" on your perception of your target. truth is you'll never really know.

Lots of people in STEM fields are very used to having a precise answer to a problem, and it often reaches a point where they have a scientific hammer and treat every problem as a nail. This goes double for people in fields that think they can explain every phenomenon using their field and don't need any other field of study.

It's also a problem that lots of social science data can be easily skewed even if the process is scientific. It has a tendency to let politics influence how a study is conducted and it relies a lot on how you interpret your evidence.

I still think social science is going in the right direction and can't stand people who think it's useless just because it's not as concrete of a science as physics or something.

Whether or not it's flawless, it's philosophy and the defensive scientism is needless.

The way everyone uses statistics everywhere is plagued with very basic mistakes and conceptual confusions. This is not limited to the social sciences.

Really great imagery. The lad's got talent.

This pasta is really taking off.

How long until someone sends it to Tyrone?

Very relevant
youtube.com/watch?v=WwRqCmrXXQ0

As a demi-consious membuoy, I would just like to say that I agree with your criticism. But as an outsider, you may not be aware that most of us are at least smart enough to FEEL that something is wrong, and to carry with us a perpetual dull anxiety whose source is always eluding us.

I first studied Philosophy and Sociology and later on I switched to Computer Science, so I know about the differences.
To me, the question is not whether humanities / social / cultural studies can rightly be called sciences, because it's evident that they differ greatly from STEM stuff, even though they might have their methodology which is considered to indispensable for any science.
I rather question if going for a major in humanities is BENEFICIAL. It's not. I was disappointed by the fact that any form of academic philosophy / sociology fail to explain the reality, the world, life or whatever you might expect. There's hardly anything that can exclusively be analyized with a strong background in any of those fields given you stick to the officially taught program.
What can I recommend? Enroll in STEM if you're smart enough and read as much as you can in your spare time. Don't forget arts, music or whatsoever. Don't think that classical education still has the relevance than it has been the case throughout the previous centuries, but don't forget to discover other precious realms neither.

mathematics rarely have direct social implications, is the point he was trying to make I think.

>"worst human being ever"

you know how you can sort of guess what a person is like by their use of language and choice of vocabulary?

Natural sciences developed a number of methods that work well in STEM, but generally do not work in social sciences. The reason for that is that society and people, as a research topic, is far more complex than what physics deal with. Because of that, STEMfags get salty and call humanities non-science. And because of that there is far less progress in humanities than in STEM disciplines over the same period of time.

except using algebra to prove Hamlet's grandson was Shakespeare's grandfather

The dichotomy between STEM and the humanities is a purely ethereal edifice perpetuated by the false notion or spook that you are limited to one or the other.

I wouldn't go so far as to call the humanities scientific, but to deny that there is a methodology in which knowledge is advanced is asinine.

Hard sciences have issues with replication as well. Political agendas also play a big role in STEM research and dishonest statistical manipulation.

Have you ever heard of at nutritional science? It's a joke.
>Eggs are good
>Eggs are bad
>Nah senpai they good again

I wouldn't call nutritional science a "hard" one, but yes it is indeed a joke. Hell, even medical research is really bad because of the terrible incentives involved (though this is starting to get better because of mandatory pre-registeration of trials).

>medicine
>science

is this why the NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the US?

that's because writing out abstract formulae on yellow paper never hurt anyone. They might not directly subscribe to an ideology through their studies, but statistical data and probability can be used to construct and inform fraudulent narratives, just as winding and deceptive as the ones espoused by the humanities. It means you can pull literally any 'facts' right out of your arse and then backtrack if proved wrong later, claiming 'oh, we simply didn't have enough data at that time to be as accurate as we should have been'.

Its transparency is what makes it such a tricky bastard to condemn, especially when people draw on its impartibility to make a claim regarding ethical contentions, without seeming like a backwards science-denier.

why are you getting snappy at me? I didn't make the original comment.
Though I can't imagine someone co opting Fermat's Last Theorem to justify the next Anschluss or kneecapping white males or whatever.

I'm translating the original comment and explaining that the mere fact that mathematics can be co opted by agenda pushers and special interest groups is irrelevant to whether the actual maths themselves have a direct social impact.
I completely agree with your last sentence by the way.

Crude generalization.

t. STEMfag

why don't grad students in the social sciences get an M.S., then?

>the mere fact that mathematics can be co opted by agenda pushers and special interest groups is irrelevant to whether the actual maths themselves have a direct social impact.

Sure. I'd also argue its a similar situation in the humanities as well, but for the inverse reason – a student might reject the agenda they believe their university is coercing them into, but in doing so they don't really learn anything apart from a surface appreciation for some of the more reactionary/controversial ideas which the progressive left push within their syllabuses. The school of resentment isn't so much a prescribed agenda anymore as it is a failure on the student's part to engage critically and meticulously with the full information presented to them.

>presupposing this much
maybe you should have taken more philosophy

>There's hardly anything that can exclusively be analyized with a strong background in any of those fields

discourse analysis

This. The future is now in interdisciplinary. We can have Design-Art + Human Computer Interaction to form a new science out of CS, Psychology and Art.

New sciences are going to be designed out of robotics too I bet. Like Robotic Psychology, or Robotic-Human Interactions, Robotic-User Experience Design and other things. These will take from both STEM and Humanities to invent new studies.

The solution to the Great Science vs. Art war was not to genocide but it was to marry the proverbial Capulets and Montegues making a pleasant mix of both.

youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo
>social science is an example of a science that is not a science

Yes. That's how I know that Scott Alexander is the worst human being ever.

I find your opinion interresting.
It doens'thurt anyone here. It's well written. This is a good kid of interaction. Thanks.

ITT:
>muh degree
>yer diploma iz shit

Thanks everyone for this shit stained dichotomy.

I think that if social sciences are that bad, so false,they wouldn't have some concrete applications. Social sciences and STEM sciences are both needed. A wolrd without one or the other would be terrible.

I agree, kind of.
I also think that social sciences, because they are younger, have to build some notority and respect. In a few decades, I hope that this kind of discussion will be more mature.

j christ

can't you even make the fucking distinction between the possibility that something is having social implications and the possibility that the application of something is having social implications

fucking emptyheaded lad wew

Not even one butthurt blind cunt to take you as a bait. This is a sign that your words are interessting.

This.

Empiricism and rationalism are ideologies ('agendas'), user.

>in the "battle" of STEM vs. humanities, the STEM are sadly winning, because the methodology that they use in their profession to reach their conclusions on humanist matters is more popularly accepted than the methodology that humanists use in their profession to reach their conclusion on humanist matters
>both STEM fields and humanities fields deal with humanist issues
>e.g. the social issue of how the humanities studies will be conducted and how STEM studies will be conducted

you're literally implying that we're currently living in a technocracy in the strictest sense of the word

I'm taking web science. Plenty of technology and some statistics and maths in it but more sociology, some politics. It can get very philosophical too. It's ultimately a liberal subject, IE defending the web as an open platform untethered by corporate interests or censorship. I don't like hardcore STEM fags they are simple minded positivists, often very nerdy and dull, disproportionately autistic.

>postmodernist theory
There isn't a universal theory you cuck. Read some post-structuralists.
Relativism

Sokal affair proved nothing, they let the author have free reign and say whatever he wanted because they wanted a scientist's take on the subject.

I think a perpetual dull anxiety that there is something fundamentally wrong with you which just eludes the contours of your own limited understanding just means you're a thinking person.

Tell me how I can optimize a circuit design or compute an integral with political motive vs publishing results of an interpreted experiment. Although peer-review helps maintain quality of research, agendas still influence interpretation of results. How do I interpret the results of a mathematical proof with political agenda as a contributing form of bias?

>in the "battle" of STEM vs. humanities, the STEM are sadly winning, because the methodology that they use in their profession to reach their conclusions on humanist matters is more popularly accepted than the methodology that humanists use in their profession to reach their conclusion on humanist matters
No, that's not what I said. Humanities have next to no methodology at all, at least in the same sense as STEM methodology, because it's very hard to develop a working methodology in humanities. Even the application of the very basics of the scientific method, like reproducibility, is a problem, because unlike in STEM, when you conduct an experiment in humanities there's hundreds of external variables and conditions that may affect its result, most of which aren't obvious at all. While in, say, physics, after all the years of experimenting people generally know how to conduct a precise experiment and measure exactly what you want to.
>the social issue of how the humanities studies will be conducted and how STEM studies will be conducted
How STEM studies are conducted is not the social issue, because the issues of the experimenter usually don't affect the studies at all. It may happen if, say, experimenters discover an effect with a potential to produce a devastating weapon. Though it happened before, it's not a common occurrence in STEM

Why didn't they peer review it?

Why do you care if it's considered a science or not? Just do your thing and do it as well as possible.

It was the general policy of the publication. They wanted controversial ideas to be able to be published or something.

>There isn't a universal theory you cuck
You've given the correct answer, but you've missed the point. Post-modernism, generally speaking, is a suspicion of any historical metanarrative which attempts to conform the world to a particular set of ideological contours, thereby consolidating power within a specific social group over another.

Academics in the field will inevitably disagree because neither wishes to concede power to the other's constructed narrative, but it is precisely this inconsistency within post-modern discourse which is what makes it so insurmountable. They disagree, but all agree to disagree because it means the study can become an autonomous study, capable of self-interrogation on a scale only matched by the natural sciences.

Post-modernism a 'social' science, undoubtedly, but its practise is one of perpetual redefinition and revision, as any science should be. It's the closest any of the humanities have come to imitating the impartiality of science.

How about when the government hires mathematicians to develop cryptography with backdoors in them. See the elliptical curve random number generator published by NIST (Dual_EC_DRBG).

Voila, a math publication corrupted by political agendas, just like the social sciences can be.

STEM types have the same issue with the social sciences that pomo humanities and social science people do, which is that they see it as normative agenda pushing because of how ambiguous it is

Both see the social sciences as malleable to say whatever you want to say

Sometimes I forget you people are humans too. Stay comfy