[arp242]

> There is also a lot of garbage of the "yeah, duh, of-fucking-course" variety. studies like "negative interactions with community reduce feelings of belonging" ... uh yeah, no shit sherlock.

I think these studies are useful, first of all to test whether it's actually true because sometimes "well du'h" turns out to be wrong, but also to quantify the exact effects. Is it a large effect or a small effect? How large exactly? Which factors exactly contribute to this effect? What exactly is the breakdown of the effects? It might be possible that 20% of the people are effected by it and 80% of people are not; or perhaps everyone is effected by it.

There's often all sorts of non-obvious nuance that's possible, which can be very significant.

[DontchaKnowit]

Yes, that is true. However, I would posit that the actual result of the most well researched, scientifically backed, rigorous results in all of sociology essentially amounts to empowering governments and private companies to produce more effective advertising, propaganda, etc.

[arp242]

That seems overly cynical. At the end of the day sociology is like any other science: "find out more about the world". Doing that is rarely a bad thing.