[mbell]

> That's possible in physics, chemistry, or biology just as well.

Yet it seems to happen far less often, or at the very least, in less publicly impacting ways. Part of this is the media, but part of it is the participants themselves. If you discover something new in physics for example, either the public doesn't care, or they don't really know, they just get a faster iPhone processor a couple years down the line when the predictions hold. The folks in your field are even skeptical at first glance, "do you have a 6 sigma result?". "Ok, well, lets talk then, but I still wanna see it reproduced". Psychology on the other hand, some person does a half assed 'study' and uses it to claim knowledge of some important aspect of humanity.

I'd really encourage looking at the Higgs discovery press conference as a perfect example. To my recollection, there was little to no mentioned of the Higgs, just cold hard facts, perhaps at the end there was a 'this is consistent with the Higgs'. Only months later were many of those involved even comfortable enough with their level of certainty to really say 'this is the Higgs'. They are searching out knowledge, and don't want to declare having found it unless they are certain. This is _good_, it's what we want science to be, the summation of our current, highly confident, view of the world. We don't want 'science' to encompass all untested and unproven hypothesis about the world.

The difficult point which I have to concede is that terminology is important. Certainly many folks in physics that maybe haven't hit on a predictive result would like to be recognized as scientists, and rightly so if they are on the path toward this endeavor. But the populous is simple, they want clearly defined words, they want 'science' to be known fact. Outside introducing new words, I don't know how to resolve this. If we don't define 'science' as denoting that which is rigorous, then we can't use "science denier" as a term, regardless of the topic.

[blackbrokkoli]

Your argument seems to be purely emotional disdain.

> Yet it seems to happen far less often

Citation needed. And if so, that is a reason to draw a line where on one side is "not-science"? That is just absurd. Does a car A stops being a means of transport when it subjectively breaks down more often than car B?

> very least, in less publicly impacting ways

Excuse me?

* A literal century ago someone failed to translate a German study so know about every child in the western civilization gets a good dose of distrust in science when they get indoctrinated that the tongue has separated regions for taste which is ridiculously easy to refute for yourself in about 15 seconds.

* The coup of the cereal industry to fund some studies telling everyone that breakfast is the most important meal of the day still misguiding health guides today.

* Schrödinger telling the world how stupid it would be to assume quantum principles in the visible world, still happily recited with the complete opposite meaning by about 500 media entities per day.

* Scientific entities failing to have any impact on people about the dangers of X-rays until people got impotent from having their shoes measured via X-rays in the local shopping mall

To be clear, this is not intended as some sort of smear campaign to science itself. I want to illustrate that all science is vulnerable to even dumb mistakes and that this dumb social sciences ain't real meme is only slowing down much overdue conversation!

[mbell]

You're supporting my point here, all your examples did not make an accurate prediction. Thus, they are not known 'facts'.

Your definition of 'science' is 'the best we know', mine, and I think what is meaningful for public discourse is 'this is true'.

[yifanl]

Sure, but what's your definition of "true"?

Derivable from first principles? General consensus? Observed once and seems to fit with the current model?

[johnisgood]

"One idea is truer than another if it allows us to explain and understand more of our experience.

The idea that the sun and stars move around the Earth explained only why they move across the sky, but the idea that the Earth orbits the sun while rotating on its axis is more true, because it explains also why we have seasons. Strictly speaking, however, we will never know whether the Earth really revolves around the sun; another, even truer, theory could conceivably come along.

In support of his view, James pointed out that in practice all scientific theories are approximations. Rarely, if ever, does one theory explain all the facts of experience. Instead, one theory often does well with one set of phenomena while the other theory does well with another set.

A scientific theory that explains more is truer than one that explains less, and the truer theory is preferred. Kuhn might add that even a paradigm that explains no more phenomena than a rival but explains those phenomena better is preferred—as for example Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the solar system was preferred to Ptolemy’s geocentric model, because Copernicus’ model was simpler and more elegant that the cumbersome epicycles of Ptolemy’s model, even though at the time the two models fitted astronomical data about equally well. If scientists prefer theories that explain more phenomena and paradigms that make more sense of our experience more plausibly, then the progress of science no longer seems so unreasonable. It is the result of selection, the exercise of scientists’ preference for theories and paradigms that make better sense of our experience."

Taken from the book "Understanding Behaviorism" by William M. Baum.

[mbell]

I don't really now how to make it more clear: Can I make accurate predictions from it? That's it.

[cjfd]

I tend to agree. There is a plausible hypothesis to explain it too. Namely, that many social scientists don't particularly like doing statistics or calculations or that they are not naturally very good at it or that they are not very conscientious. None of these factors contribute to reliable analyses. People mostly go into social sciences when they are more interesting in people than in statistics or calculations.

A study friend of mine who studied an exact science ended up working in the social science department where he also was asked to teach some research methods class. Suffice it to say that even PhD students are not very good at it. Even at things where you would suppose they would be closer to their core competency, i.e., they were not that good at avoiding the pitfall of putting leading questions in a questionaire.

[baddox]

> Yet it seems to happen far less often, or at the very least, in less publicly impacting ways.

Does it? Do you have any data to indicate that, or even a good way to define your terms?