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It's easy to dismiss a field when you compare a complicated problem to an easy problem, and then object to a lack of answers for the complicated problem, because there are so much more and better answers for the easy problem. Let's face it: Physics is easy! It's objects are often cheap to study, and usually doesn't react to the behavior of the observer. Additonally, the observed behavior is often regular and easy to model with maths. There are millions of research grants, and job opportunites because its findings are often economically useful. Also, people in general don't think they 'know' its findings in advance, so it's much easier to overcome your own biases, and opinions. In most cases, there is often no politics involved about the results. In contrast, the social sciences are really hard. Lots of causes make research harder: Objects often react to the researcher, or the setup. They want to get payed for their time. Sometimes, they react to the experimental setup due a political stance. There are ethical constraints for experiments. The shere variability of human behaviour makes it hard to use mathemathical models to describe theories. Its findings are not as useful economically, because they cannot be impletemented on a large scale. Potential users of the research often think, they 'know' how people react, anyway (folk psychology). For some findings, many people are also motivated to question the results because it conflicts with their political opinion. Overall, the barriers are much higher for the social sciences to make progress. I think these fields deserver the label 'hard', for finding the truth is really hard here. |
Psychology is not dismissed as a science because it's complicated, it's dismissed because it's not science. The fact that it's complicated is irrelevant to its standing among sciences.
And offering the explanation that it's comparatively complicated fails any test of common sense -- remember quantum theory? It's more complex than any psychological theory, and yet we acquire perfectly reliable results to ten decimal places. In fact, quantum theory is the single most successful scientific theory in existence, yet no one fully understands it. "Anyone who is not disturbed by quantum physics has not understood it." -- Neils Bohr.
> Let's face it: Physics is easy!
Only to those who don't understand the subject.
> In contrast, the social sciences are really hard.
Psychology is not a science because psychological research is so difficult? Okay, but if I were a psychologist, I would ask you not to be on my side.
> ... for finding the truth is really hard here.
Science is not about finding truth, and scientific theories never become true. Some of them resist falsification for extended periods, but all of them are perpetually falsifiable in principle by new evidence.