[TeMPOraL]

IMO - the mindset should be: social sciences are dealing with things orders of magnitude more complex than anything seen in hard sciences (except biology). Therefore, social scientists need to be much more reserved in their claims, and not much should be taken for a fact unless it's replicated in great many studies and has proven predictive power.

Whether this is the mindset social scientists have, I can't tell - but social sciences in popular media seem to be the exact opposite of that.

[carlmr]

>Whether this is the mindset social scientists have, I can't tell - but social sciences in popular media seem to be the exact opposite of that.

I think it's just not a very human mindset. I've talked to natural scientists and social scientists alike. All of them want their research to succeed, they all want to get their PhDs, get good results for their postdocs, get publications going etc.

The incentive is just there to publish somewhat inflated results. If you could get a PhD for systematcally dismantling studies (which would be much more useful than most PhD studies), we'd have a replication crisis in every field.

[gepi79]

Quote: "I think it's just not a very human mindset. I've talked to natural scientists and social scientists alike. All of them want their research to succeed, they all want to get their PhDs, get good results for their postdocs, get publications going etc."

And that is one of the major problems. Hubris and arrogance and thus bad requirements and expectations and thus cheating and lies and half-truths as normal behavior.

Also in economics: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=39198

Quote: "Further, in my field (economics) one can never really get a publication if the research only produces ‘negative’ results. That is, the researcher fails to find anything. I believe this is a common problem in other disciplines as well."