NationStates Jolt Archive

From "The Cat in the Cradle Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree?, or, Advances in Behavioral Science" entry of Reason (http://www.reason.com)'s "Hit and Run" blog at http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/03/the_cat_in_the.shtml


A Berkeley professor finds that whiny, insecure kids grow up to be conservatives--in Berkeley, at least. ...The whiny kids [he started following in the 1960s in Berkeley nursery schools] tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity. The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.


The highly partisan and politicized nature of this study, combined with my failure to find the "Journal of Research Into Personality" (in which this study is supposed to be published (http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1142722231554)) in my university's library or online databases, leads me to be highly skeptical of this professor's findings.

But I don't care about the study in question. What I am more interested in are the comments in the "Hit and Run" blog entry berating social science as being unscientific. (http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/03/the_cat_in_the.shtml#comments)

I fail to see how one potentially dubious study shows that the entire practice of social science is unscientific. One comment at the "Hit and Run" blog entry says that the Berkeley professor's study shows "...that 'social science' is still mostly social and relatively free of science. Biased language like [that used in the study] should never make it past peer review." Yet the peer review process seems to be working just fine; the very article referenced by the blog entry quotes another social scientist who considers the Berkeley professor's claims to be "biased, shoddy work, poor science at best. (http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1142722231554)"

So, someone please explain it to me. How does one study demonstrate that the entire practice of social science is unscientific? Is "social science" actually scientific at all? Why or why not?

The same way that one South Korean biotechnologist falsifying his results proves that all of biotechnology is fake.

It doesn't.

It cannot be denied that the social sciences actualy are still in search of the scientific method.
They're still trying to proper methods for grading and measuring things.

But current culture works against them, strongly.We, as western civilisation, have grown anal about not lablling people, for starters.
We're told that to draw certain conclusions would be.. hatemongering -EVEN IF IT WERE PROVEN that the conclusion is correct.

This is a thing of all times and ages. Medical studies were stuck for a long time, because there was a strong bias against what we would consider proper research.

Most current Social Sciences have the same relation to the social sciences we WILL have one day as astrology has to astronomy.

It cannot be denied that the social sciences actualy are still in search of the scientific method.
They're still trying to proper methods for grading and measuring things.

But current culture works against them, strongly.We, as western civilisation, have grown anal about not lablling people, for starters.
We're told that to draw certain conclusions would be.. hatemongering -EVEN IF IT WERE PROVEN that the conclusion is correct.

This is a thing of all times and ages. Medical studies were stuck for a long time, because there was a strong bias against what we would consider proper research.

Most current Social Sciences have the same relation to the social sciences we WILL have one day as astrology has to astronomy.
Meh. You're assuming that human and societial behaviour, systems so vastly complex and full of variables as to make planetary systems look like child's play, will actually conform to a set of empirical rules that could be made into formulae like algebra. From the subtext of what you're saying you seem to have political motivations behind this, as well...
Proof for simple conclusions in studying societies? Impossible.

To the OP: that's classic authoritarian personality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality). However well or badly the study was done, there are certainly precedents for making the connection he does.

Meh. You're assuming that human and societial behaviour, systems so vastly complex and full of variables as to make planetary systems look like child's play, will actually conform to a set of empirical rules that could be made into formulae like algebra. From the subtext of what you're saying you seem to have political motivations behind this, as well...
Proof for simple conclusions in studying societies? Impossible.

*shrug*
We'll have to start with simple gradients. That's how all science gets started.
You're assuming there are no easy to measure gradients.
How do you arrive at that weird conclusion?
It is your bsic asumption that the thing cannot be done?


Or, in repeat:
'human and societial behaviour, systems so vastly complex and full of variables as to make planetary systems look like child's play, will actually conform to a set of empirical rules. '

It's a perfectly workable work-hypothesis.
To be used and tried and tested.

What you are suggesting is that the very attempt to make working hypothesises is unacceptable, because there are ( coincidentally unproven ) complexities.

To the OP: that's classic authoritarian personality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality). However well or badly the study was done, there are certainly precedents for making the connection he does.

which also was one of the only things that was at all predictive in the milgram 'obedience to authority' experiments.

There are only two answers in the social sciences; some do some don't (I can't remember who I'm quoting, but as a Criminology/Political Science student, it is so true)

Meh. You're assuming that human and societial behaviour, systems so vastly complex and full of variables as to make planetary systems look like child's play, will actually conform to a set of empirical rules that could be made into formulae like algebra.

Do apparently "complex" systems necessarily require complex formulae and rules in order to explain how they work?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization

Poor social scientists. They make the best they can to follow the principles of the scientific method, but the subject matter just won't cooperate.

They try to be as much as possible, but part of the problem is that much of the stuff that forms the basis of the social sciences, like Freud etc, is unscientific. Its more like religion, ie made up.

Psychology in particular is more scientific. I am currently doing an essay about schizophrenia and memory deficiency, and a lot of the material is well researched. there is still a lot of guesswork, however. They do their best.

Poor social scientists. They make the best they can to follow the principles of the scientific method, but the subject matter just won't cooperate.
Pretty much.

In Economics, there are some subject matters that can be explored fairly scientifically. We have worked out many models and theories that seem to predict the behaviour of simple economic systems quite accurately.

But then, economics is maybe 200 years old (and for much of the time nothing much happened), and physics or biology have potentially millennia of past research to work with.

Moral philosophy has, indeed, this peculiar disadvantage, which is not found in natural, that in collecting its experiments, it cannot make them purposely, with premeditation, and after such a manner as to satisfy itself concerning every particular difficulty which may arise. When I am at a loss to know the effects of one body upon another in any situation, I need only put them in that situation and observe what results from it. But should I endeavour to clear up after the same manner any doubt in moral philosophy, by placing myself in the same case with that which I consider, ´tis evident this reflection and premeditaton would so disturb the operation of my natural principles,as must render it impossible to form any just conclusion from the paenomenon.
Treatise: Introduction p. xviii - xix in the Nidditch Selby-Bigge edition

Translating moral philosophy as meaning social sciences - which it did at the time - and natural philosophy as meaning the hard sciences - which it also did - the message is that we can not expect the same standards of proof from the social sciences as we do from the hard sciences due to the differences in the nature of the subject matter in the two cases.

Pretty much.

In Economics, there are some subject matters that can be explored fairly scientifically. We have worked out many models and theories that seem to predict the behaviour of simple economic systems quite accurately.

But then, economics is maybe 200 years old (and for much of the time nothing much happened), and physics or biology have potentially millennia of past research to work with.

Yep.....but thanks to Freud we aren't behind even more in that.