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Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#141

Post by JordanFarmer »

tw000001 wrote: post #139
cycomanic wrote: post #127

This is such a horrible article. Many have already mentioned the conflation of humanities and social sciences. Then by using the example of books (because most would agree books would loose their essence if we just describe them by numbers) it constructs a straw man that somehow we loose something (the beauty?) by using quantitative measures. Sure many studies have flaws (not just in the social sciences), but what is…

> conflation of humanities and social sciences. You've missed the entire point. A sort of conflation is the problem - not by the author, but by people in and around soft sciences and humanities throwing a bit of statistical jazz into their papers and then drawing ostensibly rigorous conclusions which influence social policy. The reality is that by their vary nature, both soft science and humanities (there is a lot of…

What you speak of has led to unrecoverable loss... The more mankind "knows", the more foolish we become.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#142

Post by barking »

tw000001 wrote: post #139
cycomanic wrote: post #127

This is such a horrible article. Many have already mentioned the conflation of humanities and social sciences. Then by using the example of books (because most would agree books would loose their essence if we just describe them by numbers) it constructs a straw man that somehow we loose something (the beauty?) by using quantitative measures. Sure many studies have flaws (not just in the social sciences), but what is…

> conflation of humanities and social sciences. You've missed the entire point. A sort of conflation is the problem - not by the author, but by people in and around soft sciences and humanities throwing a bit of statistical jazz into their papers and then drawing ostensibly rigorous conclusions which influence social policy. The reality is that by their vary nature, both soft science and humanities (there is a lot of…

This is 2020 and while in the past attitudeX or behaviourY might have been acceptable we have now come to understand (through Social Science Studies or NY Times bestseller that a particular academic has written) that both are wrong, toxic, in fact.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#143

Post by progre »

pdonis wrote: post #136
earthboundkid wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last forty years has been shaped by neoliberalism, which is exactly based on the idea of free markets as self-correcting. You’re so blinded by it that you’re just assuming that the theory is correct, so therefore the theory can’t have an effect! A) empirically, that was wrong and disastrously so (not as bad as communism but very bad) B) assuming reflexivity can’t exist is silly even within the neoliberal framewor…

> The last forty years has been shaped by neoliberalism, which is exactly based on the idea of free markets as self-correcting. This is not only wrong, it's laughable. Governmental interference in the economy has grown over the last forty years, not shrunk. And not with good outcomes, either: the crash of 2008-2009 was due to too much government meddling over a period of decades finally catching up with everyone.

> the crash of 2008-2009 was due to too much government meddling

I thought it was because of irresponsible speculation in dubious securities backed by by corrupt rating houses?

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#144

Post by shash »

lopmotr wrote: post #116
inerte wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also got eugenics based on “science”

We've successfully applied it to animals so it works. Just because it's against your sense of morals doesn't mean it's not based on real science.

The problem with eugenics isn’t the idea of selective breeding, but the conflation of mostly irrelevant traits or uninheritable traits with important and inheritable ones. Leading to a loss of genetic diversity and concentration of genetic diseases.

“If done right”, but I doubt it can ever _be_ done right...

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#146

Post by atq2119 »

torrance wrote: post #33

I would add to this list economics. Oxford Economist Kate Raeworth has made the exact same argument about her own discipline and the allure of the ‘hardness’ of maths and physics. The way early 20th century increasingly turned to Newtonian-like mechanistic descriptions of economic processes, reductionist and absurd ideas about ‘human nature’, and extracting Universal laws from historical and accidental correlations.…

To be fair, there is good economics out there - not as solid as the sciences of course, because the subject matter is more complex, but it does exist.

The main problem with the role of economics in society is that economics, and often pseudo-economics, are used to influence politics in a biased way.

Economists need to start strict self-policing and disavowing all the dishonest actors in political think tanks. It's difficult to do in practice because some of the dishonest actors get a lot of funding from political interests, but if economists want their discipline to earn respect as a science, they do need to clean up their act in this regard.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#148

Post by necovek »

tw000001 wrote: post #139
cycomanic wrote: post #127

This is such a horrible article. Many have already mentioned the conflation of humanities and social sciences. Then by using the example of books (because most would agree books would loose their essence if we just describe them by numbers) it constructs a straw man that somehow we loose something (the beauty?) by using quantitative measures. Sure many studies have flaws (not just in the social sciences), but what is…

> conflation of humanities and social sciences. You've missed the entire point. A sort of conflation is the problem - not by the author, but by people in and around soft sciences and humanities throwing a bit of statistical jazz into their papers and then drawing ostensibly rigorous conclusions which influence social policy. The reality is that by their vary nature, both soft science and humanities (there is a lot of…

I've never seen a half-decent study in social sciences that draws rigorous conclusions: what I have seen is those studies noticing a correlation and then mainstream media picking it up as de facto conclusions (to put out a simplest example we've all seen: "people who have more sex are happier", directly implying that having sex leads to happiness, whereas studies noticed a correlation between people who claim to be happy and sex frequency).

But you are right about what happens next: you top it off with academically uneducated (or simply unaware of scientific rigour) politicians like Trump (he's just an obvious example, far from being the only one) making calls on different social topics.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#149

Post by dash2 »

necovek wrote: post #148
tw000001 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conflation of humanities and social sciences. You've missed the entire point. A sort of conflation is the problem - not by the author, but by people in and around soft sciences and humanities throwing a bit of statistical jazz into their papers and then drawing ostensibly rigorous conclusions which influence social policy. The reality is that by their vary nature, both soft science and humanities (there is a lot of…

I've never seen a half-decent study in social sciences that draws rigorous conclusions: what I have seen is those studies noticing a correlation and then mainstream media picking it up as de facto conclusions (to put out a simplest example we've all seen: "people who have more sex are happier", directly implying that having sex leads to happiness, whereas studies noticed a correlation between people who claim to be h…

> I've never seen a half-decent study in social sciences that draws rigorous conclusions.

Perhaps you should look harder. The dominant approach in economics for 20 years has been to reject correlational studies and try very hard to get at casuality, by:

* Running randomised controlled trials, often at scale (see eg Esther Duflo);

* Laboratory experiments, which have provided a body of robust paradigms and results;

* Seeking natural experiments;

* Statistical techniques like regression discontinuity and instrumental variables.

There's plenty of bad work in the social sciences. So is there elsewhere in the natural sciences (cough Lancet). There's plenty of good work too.

Re: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

#150

Post by luckylion »

naasking wrote: post #104
wilbo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem I find tiring about most studies, even in the sciences (excluding most physics and all mathematics). It seems as if most researchers are looking for a novel or interesting correlation or apply an interesting model to a new domain. Generally, I've found this puts insufficient effort into any kind of disconfirmation. It makes sense, though, with the incentives most academic journals put into study aut…

Replication and publishing negative results do not get the respect they deserve. They should be given equal attention and funding as novel results. That would fix the replication crisis.

Are they not published in the major journals, or are they not published at all? The latter would seem insane. "We've tried this, it didn't work, but nobody will know and somebody will try it again next week to find out that it doesn't work."
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