But, but, they're peer-reviewed! I thought that was the gold standard.

Social sciences are not science, they're grievance studies. In order to have a study, you must have a grievance.

Social sciences aren't science. They never have been. The soft sciences just aren't comparable to the hard ones. They may have math. They may have peer-review. None of it matters without replicability. And repeated replicability as well.

The hard sciences suffer from all the same personal and political biases. There are cults of personality as well as anti-cults of personality. Most of the funding in the hard sciences is based on fashion and personal obsessions. In the end replicability demonstrating independence of operator washes all those sins away. It is the only way to get to the truth.

Until the soft sciences institute replicability to the same level the hard sciences have they won't be science and they aren't to be trusted.

Like a lot of fundamentalism, academic fundamentalism is mostly just papering over prejudices. I'll focus on one thing -- sex and gender. The current leftist position is that gender is merely a social construct, with no basic in biology. Yet, these same leftists also claim that race and ethnicity are fixed in genetics and completely immutable. What accounts for the difference between these two things? There appears to be no answer from the academy other than "because we said so". Further: the same academics hold that conservative and libertarian woman are not really female, disregarding both biology and self-identification. From a biological standpoint, what's the diff between a leftist woman and a conservative woman? What's the scientific reasoning for holding that the leftist woman's gender is a social construct, but the conservative woman's gender (whatever gender that is) is biological?

It's so true and so maddening that there is NO room in today's social, academic, and government structure/decision-making for recognition that differences in group outcomes may be due to something other than bias. It may be our #1 problem other than the general disappearance of freedom of speech that is not politically correct. Here is an example of the depth of the refusal to be logical: a huge leftist goal is to push equality of outcome in punishment of criminal/anti-social behavior. Our current district attorney, a Soros-backed super-leftist, came into office and announced to us, for instance, that our juvenile prosecutions would be tailored to eliminate the "school-to-prison pipeline." That minority students are X-number of times more likely to be charged criminally for behavior in schools. How I longed to be able to ask the obvious question without being fired; a question which ACCEPTS their premises: Given that we know that our minority communities suffer greatly from past and present oppression, and that this results in stressed, impoverished, and disadvantaged families and communities, and that stressed and oppressed people will understandably sometimes act out in anti-social ways, why are we pretending that minority communities don't exhibit an overall higher rate of crime than privileged communities?

"Social sciences are not science."

Not true. Some do not practice them as science. Lee Jussim does, as do Corey Clark and Bo Winegard (paper ref'd above).

No Amy. If you get rid of key parts of the scientific process (i.e. repeated replication) then you aren't practicing science. You just flat aren't.

Good scientists know the importance of being able to replicate results. Prof. Francis Arnold, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Cal. Tech., as her first professional tweet for 2020, announced the retraction of a paper published in the journal Science in May 2019, because she discovered an error in her work and the results in the published study could not be reproduced.

https://fritz-aviewfromthebeach.blogspot.com/2020/01/nobel-laureate-retracts-paper-cites.html?m=1

That, also, shows integrity.

Amy Wax raised good points. A black person will in fact do better financially if they finish school and stay out of jail--duh. The claim of the Left is that racism is so powerful that blacks are helpless, unable to control themselves. Yet I had a black neighbor who had impeccable manners, dressed sharp, and made more $ than me (legally). In addition, Jews suffered huge racism for most of the 20th Century (not able to attend the Ivy League for example)--is anyone going to argue they are helpless victims? The logical gap is why the response to Wax was so violent (naked emperors and all that).

It boils down to Marxism: everything is oppression. You are either a victim or an oppressor. This stupid world view is a cop-out on real solutions. It is ideal for the lazy activist.

A note on the social sciences: a big sin is that they take a tiny effect based on a small sample size (of mostly college freshmen) and because p

> But, but, they're peer-reviewed!

Hearting Coney's ironic approach here. ♥

> You just flat aren't.

Exactly! Science takes things like potential wealth into account! Right? Totally!

Anyway, I'd say the most ennoblingly-vindicated social scientist of my lifetime is Charles Murray.

How about that? A grinding inevitability… It's kind of like how ex utero survival rates for preemies go younger & younger, even as pro-choice automatons seek to push the permissible term for abortion ever-later.

For factual appraisal of the literature of intelligence a quarter-century ago, Murray became one of the most reviled men in American life.

But his math was sturdy, and replications of research across decades and courses of study have affirmed his (mild! courteous!) asservations… And the consequences of those truths.

Nobody ever says anything about that, though.

…Partly because once you know the truth, there's not much to do with it that's easy & helpful. Nonetheless, he knows better than to hold his breath for an apology.

Crid, you are unaware that economics is called the dismal science for exactly this reason? Of course it isn't science. Sociology, psychology, economics, and political science are inherently different things than physics, biology, and chemistry. In the same vein vegan cheese cake isn't cheese cake. They may have very good work. They may have very responsible people using very serious math doing very good stuff. But it isn't science. Cashew cake can be very good stuff. But it isn't cheese cake no matter how much someone claims otherwise.

Also, have you figured out you can't pay your taxes in ducks? Or apples? Because Mr. houses and apples are money has a really strong grasp of economics. Taken a course yet at your local community college?

On your link, there is no correlation between wealth and IQ. Flat isn't.

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0912/how-intelligence-relates-to-wealth.aspx

There is a good correlation between income and IQ. But income and wealth are different things. And there is no correlation from income to wealth. Once you reach a certain point there is a strong correlation from wealth to income. $1M invested generates a very stable $20k/year. After you hit $4M and are making over $80k/year from your investments this is more than most people make from their labor and hence the income from their wealth becomes the majority of their income. If you eliminate income from investments from the analysis there is zero correlation between income and wealth. A completely flat line. So too there is no correlation between IQ and wealth.

Conan Says:

"But, but, they're peer-reviewed! I thought that was the gold standard."

At this stage I honestly cannot be sure if you are stupid or purposefully obtuse.

Peer review is not and has never been some "gold standard" that means one uncritically accepts whatever findings come out of the process.

Peer review is simply the first filter.

It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for serious consideration.

In other words... findings that fail to pass peer review should be viewed with extraordinary skepticism. If they cannot pass peer review then the findings, methods, or analysis are likely to be extremely suspect.

If a paper passes peer review it is now at a stage for reasonable consideration... but it may still be flawed or lacking for a variety of reasons.

There are often different papers in the literature that are both peer reviewed that disagree with one another for example.

The "gold standard" for the acceptance of a scientific conclusion is not peer-review... it is consensus of conclusions along multiple lines of inquiry and along several analytical methods.

We begin to establish consensus by examining the peer reviewed literature and developing new studies and new experiments where further clarification is needed.

I am not sure why this concept is so difficult for you to absorb and understand.

"Social sciences are not science."

"Not true."

The litmus for what is a science is predictive ability. If you drop a hammer, physics can predict it's position at any point in time between release and impact with ironclad accuracy - it's a simple math exercise. To achieve this, the phenomena being studied/described must be rigidly deterministic.

Thus, for the social sciences to be true science, human behavior must be strictly deterministic, and there can be no free will. Without free will we are reduced to automata and there can be no morality or responsibility. The hammer bears no moral responsibility for the rate at which it falls. It is inevitable that the social sciences become inextricably bound to a worldview that is amoral and denies personal responsibility.

Further, humans only study scientific phenomena so as to find ways to exert control over them. Of what utility are social sciences if not to find ways to influence/control human behavior? Because of this, the social sciences lead stright to authoritarianism and statism.

As for equalitarianism - inclusion of a demographic group in any endeavor cannot have potential to improve the outcome without a corresponding potential to diminish the outcome.

bw1,

Nothing you have written is based in fact or logic.

Physicists have known for approximately a century that the world is not in any way shape or form deterministic in the manner you describe.

Physics cannot predict with ironclad accuracy the position of particles at any point in time.

That is what the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics is all about... we are fundamentally limited in the accuracy and predictability of all measurements.

As a result if you are arguing that only sciences that are "strictly deterministic" are "true science"... then there is no such thing as a "true science" at all.

We have known that physics is not "strictly deterministic" for longer than you have been alive, so this isn't some new revelation.

Leave it to you, Artie, to show up late to a thread from which most of us have of have moved on. Gotta make sure you get that last word, eh? Well, you can have it.

Conan Says ... At this stage I honestly cannot be sure if you are stupid or purposefully obtuse. ~ Artemis at January 8, 2020 10:14 AM

Have one of your ward attendants explain sarcasm to you before lights out tonight.

Artemis demonstrates the common misconception of the uncertainty principle. It says the position of the particles is unOBSERVABLE, because any means of observing or measuring it changes it. The position is subject to deterministic laws, it just can't be observed.

NONE of the technology upon which we depend daily would be possible if physics wasn't deterministic.

If social scientists were real scientists they'd all be millionaires from betting on elections and other events guided by human behavior.

It's also noteworthy that every problem that the social sciences claim to address has increased in lockstep with the increase in the number and influence of social scientists.

Artemis demonstrates the common misconception of the uncertainty principle. It says the position of the particles is unOBSERVABLE, because any means of observing or measuring it changes it. The position is subject to deterministic laws, it just can't be observed.

NONE of the technology upon which we depend daily would be possible if physics wasn't deterministic.

If social scientists were real scientists they'd all be millionaires from betting on elections and other events guided by human behavior.

It's also noteworthy that every problem that the social sciences claim to address has increased in lockstep with the increase in the number and influence of social scientists.

bw1 says:

"Artemis demonstrates the common misconception of the uncertainty principle. It says the position of the particles is unOBSERVABLE, because any means of observing or measuring it changes it. The position is subject to deterministic laws, it just can't be observed."

You could not possibly be more wrong.

Matter at its most fundamental level is "fuzzy" and indistinct.

Your understanding of modern physics is really pitiful and you are doing everyone a disservice by spreading your nonsense.

The world we live in is a probabilistic one... not a deterministic one.

That the world is probabilistic still implies things are predictable.

Bell's theorem proposed experiments back in 1964 that the world is not deterministic.

You are essentially clinging to hidden-variable theories that have been debunked for more than 50 years.

Conan Says:

"Leave it to you, Artie, to show up late to a thread from which most of us have of have moved on. Gotta make sure you get that last word, eh? Well, you can have it."

Um... you posted on January 6th... and I responded on January 8th.

That is "showing up late" to "get the last word"?

I don't know about you Conan, but I actually have a life that prevents me from living on this blog so commenting a day or so after the conversation begins is fairly reasonable.

You much not have much going on if you can live here day in day out to complain about comments that don't come within minutes or hours to correct you after you say something stupid.

Prattle on, Artemis.
In a class on quantum computing (an entire field the existence of which wouldn't even be possible if you were even close to being right) this week, I realized I slightly misstated Heisenberg. The principle states that you cannot measure both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time.

Nonetheless, physics, chemistry and other real sciences have incredibly strong predictive ability for the deterministic universe that social sciences sorely lack.

Even the probabilistic nature of the bleeding edge of physics which is generations away from being applied to any real problems impacting mankind is thousands of times more reliably deterministic than the most established bedrock elements of the social sciences on which world leaders are basing policies, like Keynes' "animal spirits."

Even if the phenomena social scientists studied had a tiny fraction of the determinism of physics and chemistry, modern social scientists are attempting the equivalent of building a fusion reactor in a field that, if it could solve its replication crisis and overcome its inherent political biases, might, in another hundred years, reach the point where physics was when Newton published his Principia.

Interesting that you don't even bother disputing the total ineffectiveness of the social sciences at solving any actual problems.

bw1,

I am glad you are taking a class on quantum computing... that being said, you still haven't gotten things correct with regard to the uncertainty principle. You also aren't just slightly off, you are missing the entire point of the principle from both a mathematical and a practical perspective.

The following statement is wrong:

"The principle states that you cannot measure both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time."

What it actually does is it identifies fundamental limits on the degree of accuracy you can perform measurements on certain pairs of conjugate variables of which position and momentum happen to be two of them.

You cannot possibly determine either position or momentum to an arbitrary degree of accuracy.

I recommend you discuss this concept in greater detail with your professor as there still appear to be some gaps in your understanding here.

"Nonetheless, physics, chemistry and other real sciences have incredibly strong predictive ability for the deterministic universe that social sciences sorely lack."

The entire point here is that the universe is not actually deterministic.

That is something you keep saying, but you are constantly wrong.

I will give you a very simple example.

Let's say you have a vacuum chamber and you fire a single electron toward a detector and have set up a double slit experiment.

There is no possible way for you to determine exactly where that electron will be detected ahead of time.

The very best you can hope to achieve is to calculate the relative probabilities that it will be detected at different locations.

That this reality might make you uncomfortable is something you will need to come to terms with... but the universe is not actually deterministic, it is instead probabilistic.

We are very good at calculating probabilities and statistics... and it just so happens that for macroscopic objects the probabilities can become overwhelming, but that doesn't have to be the case either.

Quantum computers actually rely on the fuzzy indeterministic nature of matter.

The next time you are in class I encourage you to ask your professor if quantum states are deterministic or probabilistic.

"Interesting that you don't even bother disputing the total ineffectiveness of the social sciences at solving any actual problems."

I don't know bw1... I am pretty sure that the field of economics helps to solve problems in modern society such as setting up various markets.

I am also fairly certain that linguistics has solved a wide variety of problems (e.g., the Rosetta stone).

Those are both branches of social science.

"and it just so happens that for macroscopic objects the probabilities can become overwhelming"

which is all that matters for practical purposes. The problem is, the social sciences aren't even reliably statistical. If they were, social scientists would get fabulously wealthy betting on election outcomes.

Economics doesn't solve much of anything. Just look at the world's economy. Repeat,there isn't a social problem that hasn't increased with the growth of social scientists' number and influence, and that includes economics. Most social sciences are more religions than science.

Liguistics, like music, is a humanity.

bw1 Says:

"which is all that matters for practical purposes."

This is completely incorrect.

The indeterminacy of quantum mechanics has been at the core of practical engineering issues for decades.

Quantum tunneling was the entire reason the microelectronics industry moved to high-k dielectric materials for example... to prevent leakage through the gate due to the thinness required for high capacitance, which is what is required for high speed processing.

Put simply bw1... you don't have the foggiest clue what you are talking about here.

The probabilistic/statistical nature of quantum mechanics isn't something that we will deal with generations from now... we are engineering with those considerations today and have done so for decades already.

Also... linguistics is in fact a social science... please learn about what you are discussing before making your baseless assertions.

So, then, the because the bleeding edge of the physical sciences, they lack any dterministic predictive power, that's the upshot of your position. Physical medicine's extension of human life expectancy is an illusion, because physics is probalistic at the bleeding edge. Aviation, infrastructure, all of it, a big lie.

By contrast, we have the social sciences. Throughout the 20th century, they grew in influence, and war, crime, inequality, hatred, dysfuntion, addiction have all grown with it. Pretty stark contrast.

Once again, this time with proofreading:

So, then, because the bleeding edge of the physical sciences there are probabalistic components, they lack any deterministic predictive power, that's the upshot of your position. Physical medicine's extension of human life expectancy is an illusion, because physics is probalistic at the bleeding edge. Aviation, infrastructure, all of it, a big lie. How can you regularly place your life in the hands of such voodoo?

Then, we have the social sciences. Throughout the 20th century, they grew in influence, and war, crime, inequality, hatred, dysfuntion, addiction have all grown with it. Pretty stark contrast. And yet you see some sort of equivalency.