[unishark]

> Publishing your own weak papers is one thing, but citing other people's weak papers? This seemed implausible...

This is practically required by reviewers and editors. If you wade into a topic area, you need to review the field and explain where you fit in, even though you know full well many of those key citations are garbage. You basically need to pay homage to the "ground breakers" who claimed that turf first, even if they did it via fraud. They got there first, got cited by others, and so are now the establishment you are operating under.

And making a negative reference to them is not a trivial alternative. For one thing, you need to be certain, not just deeply suspicious of the paper, which just adds work and taking a stand may bring a fight with reviewers that hurts you anyway.

[selectionbias]

Citing a paper needn't be a celebration of it, you can cite a paper to say "these guys find X but..."

[goatinaboat]

You basically need to pay homage to the "ground breakers" who claimed that turf first, even if they did it via fraud.

Even referring to it as “science” is fraudulent. Testable theories and repeatable outcomes, anyone? Time this whole field was defunded.

[textman]

Might be that I am older than most of you, but when I was in high school the term was "social studies" then later it evolved to "social science" so the university crowd could legitimize it to get more funding. there obviously is no science in it.

[boomboomsubban]

"Social studies" refers to a variety of different social science and humanities subjects taught in public education. The term comes from US lawmakers around 1900.

"Social sciences" are generally considered the "science of society," and the term comes from philosophers in the mid-1800's.

[disown]

> "Social sciences" are generally considered the "science of society," and the term comes from philosophers in the mid-1800's.

Some of the philosophers named it "science" of society in order to piggyback off the reputation of real science.

Because real science has such a great reputation, everyone from creationists ( creation science ) to social "scientists" ( social science ) have tried to associated themselves with science to gain credibility.

Social science isn't science. Neither is creationism.

Real science ( as most people understand it ) deal with natural laws and the natural world.

[boomboomsubban]

Society is an observable phenomenon that we are able to run experiments on and acquire empirical evidence about. Those experiments have so far been much more difficult to run, rely on poor measuring tools, and the limited data we have acquired is given too much weight. That's still science though.

They very much are a part of the natural world, and presumably have some kind of "natural laws" guiding them. Creationism is not, as it is about things outside our observable world

[disown]

> Society is an observable phenomenon that we are able to run experiments on and acquire empirical evidence about.

Yes we can. But not in the scientific way. Society changes. You cannot replicate your test on a society because of that. Natural laws do not. So we can reliably hypothesize and test it.

> That's still science though.

It's not a science. By definition.

> They very much are a part of the natural world, and presumably have some kind of "natural laws" guiding them.

Yes. They have natural laws guiding them. It's called physic, chemistry, biology, etc. Social "science" doesn't delve into "natural laws". Society is run, not on natural laws, but human laws.

> Creationism is not, as it is about things outside our observable world.

No it is not. It is about our observable world but uses the bible ( another thing in the natural world ).

Laws, history, political science, economics, etc are are real sciences. They are political/propaganda/etc tools to shape society.

Using your logic, just because literature exists in the natural world, it must mean literature is a science. Obviously it is not.

Just because you can observe society doesn't make it a science, no more than the fact that you can observe a play or a concert makes them a science.

In order for your claim to hold, society has to be constant. But they are not. We must have multiple copies of the same society to test on. We do not. And societies are guided not by natural law, but human law. Which leads to an absurdity because different human societies have different laws. If we follow your logic, then means that there are different natural laws depending on where you live and what country you are from.

For example, that there are laws against interracial or interreligious marriages in some societies isn't a natural law, it's a human law. There is no science in social science. No more than there is science in religion or astrology.

[pas]

That's just ignorance of how science works. There are no experiments in astronomy either ... or are there?

Natural experiments. Just as much as they happen in economics and sociology. And even though stars and black holes might be simpler than humans, it doesn't mean the soft sciences are not science.

That said exactly because of the additional complexity the bar should be higher for what's acceptable as research, viable methods and appreciable results.