Comment on Polisci

• Frogodendron@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “Real” scientists try to put a spin on it akin to “You can’t properly hypothesise, reason or make predictions about anything based on a sample size of ~200 countries that are totally outside of your control and are very different from each other”. Few more arguments get thrown into a pot.

  Doesn’t stop political scientists from mostly accurately describing things, so no harm is done here. The harm lies within pushing that opinion on general public, highlighting the that “proper” scientists don’t see any value in social “sciences”, hence contributing to public ignorance about societal problems.

  And with how lousy political views of “rational”, “logical”, “critically thinking” people in STEM sometimes are, it’s awfully ironic.

  Speaking as a disgruntled Russian STEM scientist who is horrified how willingly some of his collages ate Putin’s reasons for actions both against Ukraine and within Russia, including against fellow scientists (WTF, where’s professional solidarity?!).

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  • frezik@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s pretty much where I was going. What are soft sciences supposed to do when experimental methods are either impractical or unethical? Give up?

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    • exocrinous@startrek.website ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What are soft sciences supposed to do when experimental methods are either impractical or unethical?

      Same thing astronomy did.

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      • frezik@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Astronomy has roughly a 400 year head start on most of these. Thousands of years if you’re counting astrology (which was mixed together with nonsense).

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• explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  All the zombies

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