If I Wanted America to Fail....

[richardhutnik]

HappySqurriel said:

Kasz216 said:

It doesn't surprise me.  I have a degree in psychology, almost ones in sociology and economics, and a minor in Buisness.

I've generally found that pretty much EVERY social science tends to focus more on math because a lot of social sceinces get looked down opon by the hard sciences like physicists when it comes to research and a alot of researchers feel inferior because of it.

The social sciences (for the most part) don't use statistics, they abuse it. Which is quite remarkable because statistics is an unfortunately necessary abomination of mathematics. When using statistics correctly you're always very open about the uncertainty of what you're saying because you can not prove anything is true with statistics; you can only demonstrate that they're likely to be true.

The vast majority of papers published in the social sciences would never be published in a reputable scientific journal because they lack statistical rigour; and in many (probably most) cases this is on purpose because they would never be able to make the claims they're making if they had to approach the problem in a scientific way.

Statistics, aka, fun with dice rolling.  Yes, in the area of probabilistic outcomes (rather than causality certainty), one can end up causing things to be spun all sorts of ways, in order to get results one desired, and justify one's views ahead of time.  Yes, the social sciences attempt to apply scientific rigor to an area that doesn't fit normal hard sciences.   

Internet forums map to some degree how the soft sciences works.  If you look hard enough, you can find something on the Internet to justify whatever opinion you have.