Social Science Legitimacy Debate

Remember folks: social science != science.

Social science is science. In what way is it not?

Given the state of social sciences, I'm not sure we know much of anything. Certainly not much that can be repeated easily and often.Strange how people in one hacker news thread can internalize the sorry state of the scientific method in psychology and sociology, but then in another thread start making absolute claims, as if the issue was settled science (always aligning with their personal biases).

always remember: social science isn’t science. no matter how bad they want it to be

Social sciences are hard. We can hardly explain how a certain nucleus of a single brain works, it's impossible atm to explain how 7 billion of them interacting on a planet behave. Many smart people know that and opt for nicer closed systems like physics, computers or biology. This doesnt mean science is untrusted, but social and political sciences making bold claims should be treated like snakeoil salesmen at the moment: they cannot provide a guarantee of their method that is not self-refer

if the social sciences held themselves to the standard of the hard sciences this problem couldn't exist

You honestly believe that the social sciences have the same rigor as physics?

Psychology and social studies, antropology (and economy and whats called climate sciences) really shouldn't be called sciences. It's one of the rare cases IMO where the word really obstructs the core meaning of the subject matter.They should be considered temporary interpretations of statistical data or in short meta statistics cause that's really what they are.Much damage is being done by treating these fields as science and the article is only mentioning a few of those pro

Well, it's a 'social science':>the branch of science devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. (wikipedia)Which coming from a physics background I think of as not a proper science but lots of people study that stuff and you can get some results out of it. I think people get in trouble with economics if they start thinking it's an exact science like physics rather than a guess at what a bunch of people will do.

"Science" is often thrown around to justify things it shouldn't.Sociology hasn't had as much success as "hard" sciences so we should distinguish between the two. (for example with the controversy around major psychology experiments being unreplicable etc)