[algesten]

A postmodernist would challenge the very notion that "empirical proof" is required to back up any claim and point to the numerous flawed studies in "soft" areas like sociology, ethnology and economics, where a questionnaire may be all the empiricism required for a published paper.

Personally I'm on the fence. I totally believe human behaviour is way more complicated than can be reflected by questionnaires and simple rigged observational studies, but there is a point where we absolutely can measure something. The efficacy of medicine, subatomical particles in accelerators or human effect on global warming – those are measurable.

The point where something goes from empirically possible to measure, to impossible, is hard to find. But I do think it exists.

[VodkaHaze]

You can say that objective reality is dubious. But if you use that to subvert claims that survive testing, you're making a positive statement and you need a testable alternative. In any other case, what you're doing is using philosophy to push ideology by discrediting established facts.

I think we should separate "empiricism here is currently difficult" to "absolutely impossible"

Some fields of social science are undergoing internal turmoil (eg. Macroeconomics and some subfields of psychology). This is a good sign; old models are being discarded as new evidence and better methods pop up. In fact, I'm more concerned about sociology, where there wasn't a replication crisis.

Facts are being improved upon when you see crisis in replication. That's a sign of a healthy field of study.

As an econometrics/labor econ grad student, I can tell you I (and most of macro) could answer many questions definitively if we could do things we absolutely should not (eg. Run RCTs on real cities on things like the minimum wage). In microeconomics, we've resorted mainly to look for the effect of exogenous shocks on systems we care about (eg. The Muriel boatlift made a few studies on local unemployment/immigration due to the exogenous shocks nature of the event)

[algesten]

I would say objective reality is dubious, and wonder what claims do "survive testing"?

On the one hand, human behaviour, culture and influences is extremely fragmented, to the point where I wonder what is it we're trying to model? The subject we're trying to predict is part of this culture and influences, and probably shifting so fast it's questionable we can, with accuracy, predict much.

On the other hand we have the interpretor, the constructor of the study, who also is colored by culture and influences to the point where we must ask why is a certain model being constructed?What is predicted and why? How are people's actions interpreted to fit that model?

[VodkaHaze]

See I'm fine with all of what you just said. The problem comes at the next step, "Testable claims are dubious so XYZ."

Being skeptical is healthy. Inferring from your skepticism is not. Inferring leads to refusing vaccines, embracing homeopathic medicine, or asserting that a $15 federal minimum wage will have no disemployment effects in rural US counties.

[algesten]

No I would never make that leap. I believe social sciences in particular have suffered from over simplifying human behaviour to reduce it down to something that appears testable and that has resulted in silly predictions/claims.

But medical trials is a whole other story. Here you can very clearly construct a double blind to test the efficacy of a medicine.

[LolWolf]

I disagree. Why can we not just get really really good at measuring the universe and describe everything from there? If you agree with physics as a decent approximation of the universe, everything else is collective/emergent (though statistical, sure) behaviour; so there is no 'natural line' of impossibility at any level. In fact, I'd argue it's the opposite, but maybe I'm misguided and highly biased (as a physicist).

I guess my question is: what's your reasoning behind the statement that such a line exists?

[algesten]

Humans behaviour. A gazillion synapses interconnected together first directly in our brains and then by being part of a context.

I think it's like building a model accurately predicting the grains of sand around the world. Sure, theoretically we can get really really good at measuring everything, so we pretty much know where all those grains are, but I suspect we're not close.

Instead we must do, as you say, "decent approximation" – and this is where my line comes in. I think the crudeness of our current models to predict human behaviour are equivalent to roughly knowing where the Sahara desert is.

[EdiX]

The fact that "soft" sciences are too often junk sciences is not proof that "empirical proofs" aren't required. The opposite is true, in fact.