[dragonwriter]

> That's because just about any other discipline is capable of conducting a controlled experiment. The problem with statistics in social sciences is that you don't control anything.

Statistical controls are real controls, and are frequently used not only in social sciences, but in so-called "hard" sciences for large, complex, or distant systems that can't be conveniently be set up in a laboratory. Laboratory-style control is one particularly convenient mechanism for isolating particular independent variables, but its not a defining requirement of empirical science.

[AnthonyMouse]

Using statistical controls is far more likely to lead to error because you controlled for three relevant variables when there were three thousand. This is drastically exacerbated by the political consequences of social science. Nobody can really gain any political advantage in publishing experimental results that show an erroneous gravity constant and are immediately disproven by contrary experiments (cf. climate change, the papers denying which are taken seriously by no mainstream scientists), whereas papers purporting to show that racism is or is not still prevalent are the sort of things that get bills passed and politicians elected. The consequence is that publishing a paper in social science that provides support for a politically unpopular conclusion tend to be Very Bad for the careers of the scientists, with political opponents tearing apart anything they might have missed (because papers supporting popular opinion miss nothing?) and otherwise making every effort to discredit them.