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To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

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Re: To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

#41

Post by claudiawerner »

ralusek wrote: post #15

For those interested in this, take a look at the work regarding "grievance studies" by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose. They made intentionally unscientific studies with the intent of publication, and actually got themselves published on a few of their works. The objective was to demonstrate that not only does academia in the social sciences operate according to a completely different standard th…

People (perhaps you too) seem to have the idea that only social sciences are vulnerable to publishing stings like the one Boghossian and his friends pulled off, but that's not true[0][3]. Next, all the places the "hoax" papers were [mostly] submitted to were of low prestige (i.e poor ranked)[1]. The paper they wrote as a summary of their conclusions does not even rigorously define what field(s) in the social sciences they have issues with, instead they collect it under the nebulous term "grievance studies" - which is a term they made up themselves to deride academics (so much for the scientific spirit of camaraderie[4]).

The "hoax" they pulled off doesn't seem to be showing what they say it does, at least not to the degree they suggest; from here[2]:

>Let’s analyze the hoax a bit more carefully. The team wrote up 21 bogus papers altogether. (The essay starts by saying there were only 20; according to Lindsay, that’s because two of the papers were largely similar to one another.) Of those 21, two-thirds never were accepted for publication. The Areo essay dwells on several papers that had been rejected outright, including one suggesting that white students should be enchained for the sake of pedagogy, and another proposing that self-pleasure could be a form of violence against women. They take it as a sign of intellectual decay that such papers managed to elicit respectful feedback from reviewers, even short of publication.

Academics warn against doing what Boghossian and friends did for their own good[5].

>The hoax was cruel; it sought to discredit targeted journals by setting a trap that exploited the scholarly predispositions of their editors and reviewers. Moreover, because of the anonymous review system, once the tricksters revealed their intent, only the editors whose names appear on the journal’s masthead suffered the sting of adverse public scrutiny. More finessed responses by the disgruntled threesome would have employed tactics such as persuasion, insight, engagement with the actual scholarship, and good sportsmanship (Bergstrom, 2018).[6]

Most importantly, the researchers didn't include a control group for their study. How can they claim to be outing "bad science" when their own methodology is so poor and fails to prove anything other than anecdota and suspicion?

One of the reviewers subject to the hoax wrote:

>"Anyways, I guess I could be more critical in the future, but I assumed a grad student had written a confusing paper and I tried to be constructive. I'm embarrassed that I took it as seriously as I did, I'm annoyed I wasted time writing a review, and I'm glad I rejected it."[8]

P.Z. Meyers put the situation best[7]:

>If you can find a bad article accepted for publication in a feminist journal, please do jump on it and tear it apart. That contributes to the strength of the discipline. Don’t write a bunch of bad articles of your own, which are clearly intended only to weaken the whole discipline and provide a set of easy, straw-man arguments that you can use to pretend you’re a smart guy.

And for the icing on the cake: Sokal himself isn't all that impressed with Boghossian's efforts[9]. A good thread discussing the hoax is on the social sciences subreddit[10].

[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17288-crap-paper-acce...

[1] https://i.redd.it/qsi6i5rbv3q11.png

[2] https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/grievance-studies-hoax-...

[3] https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/an-embarrassi...

[4] https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2018/10/bad-argume...

[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03783...

[6] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14733250198338...

[7] https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/10/03/give-it-a...

[8] https://twitter.com/dwschieber/status/1047497301021798400

[9] https://www.chronicle.com/article/What-the-Conceptual/240344

[10] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/comments/9noxmp/is...

Re: To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

#42

Post by vipref »

claudiawerner wrote: post #41
ralusek wrote: post #15

For those interested in this, take a look at the work regarding "grievance studies" by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose. They made intentionally unscientific studies with the intent of publication, and actually got themselves published on a few of their works. The objective was to demonstrate that not only does academia in the social sciences operate according to a completely different standard th…

People (perhaps you too) seem to have the idea that only social sciences are vulnerable to publishing stings like the one Boghossian and his friends pulled off, but that's not true[0][3]. Next, all the places the "hoax" papers were [mostly] submitted to were of low prestige (i.e poor ranked)[1]. The paper they wrote as a summary of their conclusions does not even rigorously define what field(s) in the social sciences…

>> Most importantly, the researchers didn't include a control group for their study.

I'm not sure what qualifies as a "good methodology"?

Re: To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

#43

Post by abdullahkhalids »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #7

I'm always amazed that someone who by all rights should be intimately familiar with the history of social science research like McIntyre can seemingly be so unaware of it. There was an empirical, modernist period in social sciences in the 40-80s of exactly the kind suggested by Lee and it was an absolute disaster. The results couldn't be related to the real world, and no one was really able to get over the inherent […

> After a lot of arguing and furious paper writing in the late 80s-90s,

Can you cite at least one paper from this series?

Re: To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

#45

Post by claudiawerner »

paganel wrote: post #35
hogFeast wrote: post #4

Sounds like, unsurprisingly, the author hasn't spent that much time considering any of these questions themselves...they just have all the answers for those that do (thanks buddy!). Some questions just deal with issues that are just not quantifiable (even the question he poses about immigration is just not completely quantifiable). And even questions that are quantifiable are often affected by beliefs (i.e. what happ…

Very well put. Regarding history and its own past battles with this illusory search for "correctness" and mathematical-like precision, I'm really surprised that the author seems to have completely ignored Popper's pretty well known "The Poverty of Historicism" [1]. I'd also strongly recommend the author to also check Raymond Aron's "Introduction to the philosophy of history : an essay on the limits of historical obje…

If you're interested in the topic, Marcue's[0] (and others'[1]) response to Popper's complaints about "historicism" (a term Marcuse takes Popper to task for)

[0] "Karl Popper and the Problem of Historical Laws" (1958)

[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095269519701000...

Re: To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

#47

Post by malvosenior »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #39
malvosenior wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your data is not good enough, get better data. Don't abandon objectivity. I think this is why a lot of people don't take the social sciences seriously, there's an extreme resistance to just doing objective, data driven research (and the lack of reproducibility that comes with that).

Again, the issue isn't one of methodology or technology. It's inherent to the research process. Let's do a thought experiment and imagine two identical research projects done in parallel universes. Everything is the same between these two universes except that the researchers are different people. In some fields, you'd probably expect the results to be the same. The researcher shouldn't affect objective results after…

I think it says a lot about the value of the social “sciences” that they can’t be backed by data and aren’t reproducible. It seems that maybe they can be data driven but the results aren’t what the traditional practitioners of the field like to see.

I think we’ll see the role they historically played replaced by machine learning which has more predictive power simply because it’s backed by reality.

Re: To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

#49

Post by RenThraysk »

claudiawerner wrote: post #41
ralusek wrote: post #15

For those interested in this, take a look at the work regarding "grievance studies" by Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose. They made intentionally unscientific studies with the intent of publication, and actually got themselves published on a few of their works. The objective was to demonstrate that not only does academia in the social sciences operate according to a completely different standard th…

People (perhaps you too) seem to have the idea that only social sciences are vulnerable to publishing stings like the one Boghossian and his friends pulled off, but that's not true[0][3]. Next, all the places the "hoax" papers were [mostly] submitted to were of low prestige (i.e poor ranked)[1]. The paper they wrote as a summary of their conclusions does not even rigorously define what field(s) in the social sciences…

It did prove that the only people capable of pointing out there were problems with the hoax papers are people generally critical of the social sciences. That alone demonstrates a problem.

That's why the experiment ended early.

PZ Meyers is a doxing buffoon.

Re: To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

#50

Post by claudiawerner »

RenThraysk wrote: post #49
claudiawerner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People (perhaps you too) seem to have the idea that only social sciences are vulnerable to publishing stings like the one Boghossian and his friends pulled off, but that's not true[0][3]. Next, all the places the "hoax" papers were [mostly] submitted to were of low prestige (i.e poor ranked)[1]. The paper they wrote as a summary of their conclusions does not even rigorously define what field(s) in the social sciences…

It did prove that the only people capable of pointing out there were problems with the hoax papers are people generally critical of the social sciences. That alone demonstrates a problem. That's why the experiment ended early. PZ Meyers is a doxing buffoon.

How is that true when a good proportion of their papers were rejected, and they kept trying in other journals until they were accepted? What about the fact that several reviewers wrote critical responses and suggestions for improvement? Why can't what you said also be said about hoaxes in the "hard sciences" like this[0]? HN user voidhorse has a good comment about their tactics[1] (quote):

> Sure, the criticism this hoax is trying to demonstrate may be legitimate, but the methodology is one designed to highlight the cleverness of its executors and diminish the credibility of a discipline, rather than point out constructive areas for improvement. Basically, it is a methodology that does not treat its targets as intellectual equals and is quite indecorous—you get the sense that a major point of this operation is to discredit the field and make its practitioners feel some kind of public humiliation or shame. A childish tactic.

[0] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18899529

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