[mech998877]

The replication crisis in science is particularly bad within the social sciences, and also particularly bad within sociology. When experts within a field are unable to converge on a result, it's pretty decent evidence that the field has a major problem. And for sociology, the problem isn't that the math is too hard, it's that the practice of sociology is pretty much a political exercise masquerading as science.

[derbOac]

This is a narrative that doesn't match the reality.

Reported failures to replicate are pretty similar in other fields, including in biomedicine. The replication crisis was just first highlighted in social psychology; lots of other fields just don't report these failures to replicate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis). It's a bit like shooting the messenger.

It's funny reading through the comments in this thread because there are people claiming that sociology both (1) is so obvious that the effects replicate at such rates that the research is useless because everything is known a priori and (2) that nothing replicates at all.

Also, criticizing fields like social psychology and sociology for focusing on social phenomena seems a bit strange because that's what the fields are about. It's like criticizing biology for having too much of a bias toward living things.

[t0mpr1c3]

> The replication crisis in science is particularly bad within the social sciences

This is true. Your conclusion is false and prejudicial. The problem is better characterized as social science is being harder to do well than we tohught.

[tbrownaw]

> > And for sociology, the problem isn't that the math is too hard, it's that the practice of sociology is pretty much a political exercise masquerading as science.

> The problem is better characterized as social science is being harder to do well than we tohught.

And the thing that makes it had to do well is that it's easy to know ahead of time what experimental result will best favor your existing beliefs.

[wredcoll]

Well put. It's easy to attack people attempting to work on hard problems for not achieving perfect results. Which they don't. Because IT'S HARD.

Weirdly, these critics never have useful suggestions to improve anything, it's all just personal attacks at one remove.

I mean, frankly, we wouldn't need a lot of these studies if people in power were slightly more willing to just believe (usually minority) people who talk about the problems they have.

Black soldiers were denied home loans after ww2; white soldiers were not; many white families therefor benefitted from owning a home (appreciation of value and safety/stability) in ways that black families did not.

Do we need a study on that? I mean, it doesn't hurt anything, but we could also just read some reports and talk to some people and then realize "hey this is messed up"