Social Science Screwup

[farscott]

This article may be of interest. https://quillette.com/2019/09/17/i-basically-just-made-it-up-confessions-of-a-social-constructionist/

A few quotes follow.


If I had known, 20 years ago, that my side in the ideological wars over gender and sex was going to win so decisively, I would have been ecstatic. Back then, I spent many evenings at the pub or at dinner parties debating gender and identity with other graduate students; or, really, anyone who would listen—my mother-in-law, my relatives, or just a random person unlucky enough to be in my presence. I insisted that there was no such thing as sex. And I knew it. I just knew it. Because I was a gender historian.


Back then, quite a few people disagreed with me. Almost nobody who hadn’t been exposed to such theories at a university could bring themselves to believe that sex was wholly a social construct, because such beliefs went against common sense. That’s what makes it so amazing that the cultural turnaround on this issue has happened so quickly.


I also published an article out of my Master’s thesis, which probably had a wider reach than my scholarly work. This was a fun article called Finding a Place for Father: Selling the Barbecue in Postwar Canada, which looked at the connection between men and barbecuing in Canada in the 1940s and 1950s. (Yes, this is the sort of thing that academics do.) First published back in 1998, it has been republished several times in textbooks for undergraduate students. Plenty of young university students, first learning about Canada’s history, have been forced to read that article to learn about the history of gender—and the social construction of gender.


The problem is: I was wrong. Or, to be a bit more accurate, I got things partly right. But then, for the rest, I basically just made it up.

In my defence, I wasn’t alone. Everyone was (and is) making it up. That’s how the gender-studies field works. But it’s not much of a defence. I should have known better. If I were to retroactively psychoanalyze myself, I would say that, really, I did know better. And that’s why I was so angry and assertive about what I thought I knew. It was to hide the fact that, at a very basic level, I didn’t have proof for part of what I was saying. So I stuck to the arguments with fervor, and denounced alternative points of view. Intellectually, it wasn’t pretty. And that’s what makes it so disappointing to see that the viewpoints I used to argue for so fervently—and so baselessly [sic]—have now been accepted by so many in the wider society.


You could cherry pick other contextual details. And indeed, in my book, I did just that. I had become fascinated by reading about the modernization of life at mid-century, and so I pointed out all of the ways in which people in the postwar years connected talking about modernity with talking about manliness. It was, as a work of scholarship, fairly elegantly done, if I may say. The problem was, it was also, partly, intellectually bankrupt.

In other words, this is not science; it is religion as belief trumps all.

[blues]

Sounds like Scientology.

[feudist]

Sounds like someone needs an involuntary gender change.

[RevolverRob]

Social science lacking in scientific rigor? I'm stunned.

I remember sitting in a Sociology class as an undergrad. We were discussing Joan of Arc and the instructor was blathering on about how Joan of Arc dressed like a man, because she suffered from gender dysphoria and refused to abide by societies rules for women.

I raised my hand and said, "Then can you explain why Joan of Arc stated that she wore men's clothes to avoid being raped by the men she worked with?"

"She never said such a thing."

"Yes she did, it's here in the court records." - I read the passage aloud from the fucking textbook the instructor had assigned.

"Well...it's open to interpretation."

"What interpretation? That this commonly spouted talking point that holds Joan of Arc as a demigod figure in a modern socio-cultural context is probably not correct? Instead she should be understood as a function of her time and place in the world?"

"...Yes...Well, I think we'll end here for today."

:rolleyes:

[Zincwarrior]

Social science lacking in scientific rigor? I'm stunned.

I remember sitting in a Sociology class as an undergrad. We were discussing Joan of Arc and the instructor was blathering on about how Joan of Arc dressed like a man, because she suffered from gender dysphoria and refused to abide by societies rules for women.

I raised my hand and said, "Then can you explain why Joan of Arc stated that she wore men's clothes to avoid being raped by the men she worked with?"

"She never said such a thing."

"Yes she did, it's here in the court records." - I read the passage aloud from the fucking textbook the instructor had assigned.

"Well...it's open to interpretation."

"What interpretation? That this commonly spouted talking point that holds Joan of Arc as a demigod figure in a modern socio-cultural context is probably not correct? Instead she should be understood as a function of her time and place in the world?"

"...Yes...Well, I think we'll end here for today."

:rolleyes:

This is going to reflect negatively in your grade young man...

[Joe in PNG]

As Feynman called it, "Cargo Cult Science". (http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

[RevolverRob]

This is going to reflect negatively in your grade young man...

I got an A in that course. But I think it was mostly because the instructor didn't want to have to fight with me and instead wanted me to go away.

[cheby]

I got an A in that course. But I think it was mostly because the instructor didn't want to have to fight with me and instead wanted me to go away.

It is also because it happened some time ago. Today you would be called bigot and expelled by those very open and progressive people

[RevolverRob]

It is also because it happened some time ago. Today you would be called bigot and expelled by those very open and progressive people

Nah, not expelled; burned at the stake maybe, but not expelled.

[John Hearne]

And then there's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

[OlongJohnson]

I remember sitting in a Sociology class as an undergrad.

Me, too. While pursuing my engineering degree, I was able to satisfy that requirement with a course for which the guest speakers included Phil Hill and James Schefter.

[RevolverRob]

And then there's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

It's true that there is an issue with reproducibility in science, to some degree. However, the doomsday scenarios are a bit overblown. The number one reason why experiments aren't reproducible is due to lack of adequate description in the final published form of the work or due to lack of proper preparation and maintenance of datasets.

Example: I just received a review back on a manuscript, that isn't really that long (<20 manuscript pages, which is about 9 formatted pages). One of the reviewers wrote,


I have an issue with the relative emphasis you give to different parts of the text. On a percentage basis of the word count your sections have the following relative lengths: Introduction (13.56%), Material & Methods (45.56%), Results (13.14%), Discussion (25.35%), Conclusions (2.29%). Based on these counts your manuscript would appear to be a methods paper. I understand that is probably not what you intended, You should reconsider the organization and emphasis structure of your manuscript.

I authored the response and said,


We respect the opinion of the reviewer, but do not share it. Our perspective is that materials and methods is not only often the longest portion of scientific publications, it is among the most critical for allowing assessment and reproduction of our work. The reviewer certainly understands that considerable work is undertaken to conduct even “simple” projects. We have made efforts to reduce and/or remove redundant sections to simplify the text and reduce its bulk, while retaining the ability for future researchers to both access what was done and reproduce it.

In other words - I had a reviewer tell me to shorten the paper, because it was obvious to them what we had done. I mostly refused, both on principle and necessity, to cut significant chunks of a manuscript to shorten its overall length. Unfortunately, my response isn't necessarily typical, I came up in an academic tradition that does not favor brevity over clarity. Many are on the other end of the spectrum.

The reproducibility crisis is also a reflection of the places people publish their materials. In the highest impact, most visible, journals space is at a premium and methods sections are often reduced to mere snippets of what they should be. I submitted a paper that ultimately was not published in a "Big 3" journal last year, I had a methods section that had to be trimmed to <500 words. I had a "supplemental methods" section, contained in a separate document that is only published online, not in print, that had a methods section that was nearly 5,000 words long. An order of magnitude had to be cut from what would have been the published version. If someone read only the journal published version and attempted to reproduce my results that are not likely to get far.

___

Dataset management is another issue. Not even 10 years ago, there did not really exist good universal databases and formats for sharing large amounts of scientific data. Today with GitHub, Open Science Framework, etc. It's now possible to host large and complex datasets that are maintained into perpetuity in association with published works. 15 years ago, this was basically exclusively the domain of museums and we did a poor job of maintaining digital data. Now we are so much better at this, it is no longer an excuse to not take care of and maintain data.

None-the-less it happens. I once contacted an author for copies of a dataset for my master's thesis, the author responded with, "Sorry dude, it's been 10 years since that paper was published and I've moved five times. I lost those data long ago." That instantly makes the results of that particular project not reproducible. I remember my Master's Thesis advisor's reaction when I told him that, "That's bullshit. Do not EVER do that. Publish everything all together, whenever possible." And I've endeavored to do precisely that since then.

[cheby]

This was published in a peer reviewed magazine a couple years ago:
https://www.skeptic.com/downloads/conceptual-penis/23311886.2017.1330439.pdf

More on this can be found here:
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/

" That’s how we began. We used this preposterous sentence to open a “paper” consisting of 3,000 words of utter nonsense posing as academic scholarship. Then a peer-reviewed academic journal in the social sciences accepted and published it"

[Glenn E. Meyer]

The Chronicle of Higher Education documents this sort of hilarity all the time. As long as tenure is based on number of papers and some fields have defined acceptable paradigms, you get this kind of thing.

[OlongJohnson]

As Feynman called it, "Cargo Cult Science". (http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

Interesting background on that phrase. Worth googling.

[willie]

You see, it's like this. A man is built different than a woman.

[Robinson]

The whole concept of so-called "gender studies" is annoying.

[blues]

The whole concept of so-called "gender studies" is annoying.

You think that's annoying, what about waiting for a bathroom in Charlotte?

42828

[willie]

Maybe it's like the restrooms in a place I visited in Austin many years ago. I could not figure out which was the men's room, and upon asking the not too bright security guard, he told me that they were bisexual restrooms.

[5pins]

Maybe it's like the restrooms in a place I visited in Austin many years ago. I could not figure out which was the men's room, and upon asking the not too bright security guard, he told me that they were bisexual restrooms.

So what bathroom did heterosexuals use?

[Cory]

I have a 2 year in social science. I'm 15 credits and an internship shy of a 4 year degree. I quit pursuing the degree because of professors who peddle this stuff, and stuff like it.

They peddle BS theories and concepts to moldable kids out of highschool and pass it off as higher intellectual thinking. Being a post-deployment 22ish year old I didn't buy in. The problem is that some teachers respect well thought out aruments against their opinion, and will still grade you fairly. Others will penalize you via poor grades for daring to not be open-minded like them. I got tired of having to write and say things that are 100% wrong to pass.

To graduate I needed two classes that were "problematic" They are only offered during opposite semesters. The first could only be taken with a female professor who was also head of the deparment. She could not reconcile nonsense theory with reality. She would talk about her husband and kids and their dynamics, only to talk about some warped theory that contradicted it in the next breath. The other professor seriously insulted me and made fun off me in class for being a Christian. He laughed, and the entire class just sat stunned. I think he was a bit insecure as a young professor and didnt like that I wasnt looking for validation. As the only male student I think he somehow felt challenged. I found out he was let go because he had young female students grading his papers in exchange for high grades. He had done some serious no-nos, hit on some girls, and actually done no work.

I wanted the degree to move toward law enforcment at the time. I have no intention to complete the 4 year. I learned alot about how people think, and it wasnt a waste. But it wasn't worth continuing either.

My wife also missed a 4.0 in her business degree because of 1 sociology professor who lost her test "but Im pretty sure you got a 50" on an open book test. Perfect marks in everything else. Perfect. Just shows the honesty of a few of those folks.

-Cory

[rob_s]

It amazes me that people don’t seem to realize that the “social sciences” are largely populated by people that never grew out of taking the opposite stance as their parents or the “establishment” as the basis for their entire existence.

[blues]

It amazes me that people don’t seem to realize that the “social sciences” are largely populated by people that never grew out of taking the opposite stance as their parents or the “establishment” as the basis for their entire existence.

I think there's some truth to that, and that seemed to largely be the case in the 70's when I went to university.

But that doesn't negate the validity of some of their claims, aims and goals. The problem is often with the context, and (lack of) willingness to find a middle ground and not try to overthrow the system to achieve their goals. At least in my view.

No side has a monopoly on the truth.