# Is sociology really a "science"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 4, 2009, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793 "2009-01-04T06:36:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/61 "2009-01-06T15:19:33Z")
> [@BetsQ](#): > > but I’ve done some pomo work as well. For some reason, my eyes read that as “porno work.” I think I just failed the Rorschach inkblot test. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/62 "2009-01-06T16:14:05Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > It’s possible to play games of _tu quoque_ with physics, and other objective sciences, but the fact remains, quacks in physics are marginalized and not considered physicists by other working physicists, they receive no funding, they do not get positions in physics departments, etc. Really? Physicists have had phenomenally wacky ideas over the centuries. Niels Bohr tries to bat a bit above his average here: > [@](#): > > This domain [Psychology] is distinguished by reciprocal relationships which depend on the unity of our consciousness and which exhibit a striking similarity with the physical consequences of the quantum of action. We are thinking here of well-known characteristics of emotion and volition which are quite incapable of being represented by visualizable pictures. In particular, the apparent contrast between the continuous onward flow of associative thinking and the preservation of the unity of the personality exhibit. . . analogy with the relation between the wave description of the motions of material particles, . . . and their indestructible individuality. More quackery from that wacky physicist run out on a rail, Max Born: > [@](#): > > The thesis “light consists of particles” and the antithesis “light consists of waves” fought with one another until they were united in the synthesis of quantum mechanics… . Only why not apply it to the thesis Liberalism (or Capitalism), the antithesis Communism, and expect a synthesis, instead of a complete and permanent victory for the antithesis? There seems to be some inconsistency. But the idea of complementarity goes deeper. In fact, this thesis and antithesis represent two psychological motives and economic forces, both justified in themselves, hut, in their extremes, mutually exclusive. . . . There must exist a relation between the latitudes of freedom df and of regulation dr, of the type df\*dr … But what is the “political constant” p? I must leave this to a future quantum theory of human affairs. I have heard physicists argue quite passionately that string theory is closely related to quackery. I have no position on this issue, personally. ---
**Author:** ![WoodenTaco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/45deac/32.png) [@WoodenTaco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WoodenTaco)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/63 "2009-01-06T20:00:36Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Really? Physicists have had phenomenally wacky ideas over the centuries. The plagiarism from [Mara Beller](http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/Sokal/Sokal/Beller.html) is appreciated, but that’s not a very good article. I’d point out first that those quotes don’t come close to replicating real [crackpottery](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html). But her citations are also… borderline. > [@](#): > > Niels Bohr tries to bat a bit above his average here: I’d like to know the source of this quote. The original author, Mara Beller, certainly doesn’t tell us. Do you know? > [@](#): > > More quackery from that wacky physicist run out on a rail, Max Born: Yeah, that book was written in 1962, 8 years after Born had retired. It was extremely obscure and never garnered any attention from serious academics. You aren’t disproving the original claim, that physicists won’t get scholarly backing if they promote quackery. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/64 "2009-01-06T20:21:50Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Really? Physicists have had phenomenally wacky ideas over the centuries. Sure. Fortunately, neither of those two quotes are dealing with physics _per se_, which is what I was talking about. It’s easy to find physicists babbling incoherently about something they don’t understand—having a PhD doesn’t make you an expert on everything. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/65 "2009-01-06T21:22:44Z")
> [@WoodenTaco](#): > > The plagiarism from [Mara Beller](http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/Sokal/Sokal/Beller.html) is appreciated, but that’s not a very good article. I’d point out first that those quotes don’t come close to replicating real [crackpottery](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html). But her citations are also… borderline. > > I’d like to know the source of this quote. The original author, Mara Beller, certainly doesn’t tell us. Do you know? It’s a great article, actually, and I was certainly not plagiarizing. Good grief. Unfortunately, the footnotes are cut off the web article. I do not have a copy of _Physics Today_ from the late nineties, when it was published. Do you have any serious reason to doubt the attribution? > [@](#): > > Yeah, that book was written in 1962, 8 years after Born had retired. It was extremely obscure and never garnered any attention from serious academics. You aren’t disproving the original claim, that physicists won’t get scholarly backing if they promote quackery. It did not garner attention from serious academics presumably because it is completely cracked. > [@Capt. Ridley's Shooting Party](#): > > Sure. Fortunately, neither of those two quotes are dealing with physics per se, which is what I was talking about. It’s easy to find physicists babbling incoherently about something they don’t understand—having a PhD doesn’t make you an expert on everything. Certainly true. But when Peter Woit essentially calls superstring theory not even wrong, I have to wonder. I am not a physicist so I take no technical position. But serious physicists are calling a well-funded and highly publicized specialty pseudoscientific. Hell, even the Brothers Bogdanov got published in several peer reviewed journals. Amusingly, if you believe the Wikipedia entry, the only positive comments mentioned were from a string theorist. This is not just a _tu quoque_. Sociology and other social sciences admit a mongrel of methodologies in their tents for a variety of reasons. Physics was in this position once as well, but much of the crap was shaken out as the capability for measurement grew and the mathematical tools grew more sophisticated. I expect a similar pattern in the softer sciences. As we are able to measure more and collect more data, there will simply be fewer useful methods. This has for the most part already occurred in economics. Neoclassical economics is now, well, economics. My own training is in political science, and slowly but surely, this will occur as well. Political “scientists” sometimes complain bitterly about the “colonization” of rational choice methodology. I am sure the Ptolmaists complained, too. I simply find it impossible to accept, however, that physics is somehow immune to pseudoscience. It appears to be a marvelous myth that proceeds from the awesome reputation of individual physicists, the high educational/intellectual barriers to entering the field, and the fact that it truly is a useful and wonderful field of human knowledge. Sociology is as well. It is not unreasonable to call the entire discipline unscientific because some of its researchers actually are. The fact that sociology is not (yet) scientific by definition does not imply that no sociology is scientific. I suspect that we agree on this. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2009, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/66 "2009-01-06T23:15:01Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Certainly true. But when Peter Woit essentially calls superstring theory not even wrong, I have to wonder. I am not a physicist so I take no technical position. But serious physicists are calling a well-funded and highly publicized specialty pseudoscientific. Woit’s thesis revolves around his belief that string theory is incapable of making testable predictions in the near future. On this point, he is wrong, as several SDMB threads (including one started by me) will testify. > [@](#): > > Hell, even the Brothers Bogdanov got published in several peer reviewed journals. Amusingly, if you believe the Wikipedia entry, the only positive comments mentioned were from a string theorist. So? Peer review’s mostly a polite joke, and I say that as a published author. There’s a marked difference between getting a paper published and it being accepted into the body of scientific knowledge. Peer review _isn’t_ how science or mathematics progresses, it’s just a mechanism for catching embarrassing gaffes, making sure all papers conform to a set style, catching typos, pointing out missed opportunities for comparisons with existing work, etc. In my experience, it’s rare for an actual error in work to be spotted, even if it is blatant. Is the work of the Bogdanov brothers accepted by physicists as being a valid piece of physics? I doubt it. > [@](#): > > This is not just a _tu quoque_. Sociology and other social sciences admit a mongrel of methodologies in their tents for a variety of reasons. Physics was in this position once as well, but much of the crap was shaken out as the capability for measurement grew and the mathematical tools grew more sophisticated. That, or as an understanding of epistemology developed, an appropriate methodology for addressing hypotheses about the physical world developed: science. We have that knowledge now. There’s no need to reinvoke the 17th century. > [@](#): > > I simply find it impossible to accept, however, that physics is somehow immune to pseudoscience. It appears to be a marvelous myth that proceeds from the awesome reputation of individual physicists, the high educational/intellectual barriers to entering the field, and the fact that it truly is a useful and wonderful field of human knowledge. Then demonstrate that there’s at least a sizable fraction of those calling themselves physicists, who are accepted as such, practicing pseudoscience. > [@](#): > > Sociology is as well. It is not unreasonable to call the entire discipline unscientific because some of its researchers actually are. The fact that sociology is not (yet) scientific by definition does not imply that no sociology is scientific. I suspect that we agree on this. Of course. Like I said, those practicing science need to make a concerted effort to split away. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/67 "2009-01-07T03:31:48Z")
I hesitate to dismiss Woit, Lee Smollin, and others of this opinion due to testimony on the SDMB. These aren’t crackpot physicists here, they are very much a part of the mainstream scientific establishment. There appear to be serious issues with the _culture_, not the epistemology. What is still an open question for some in the social disciplines is whether this is the correct epistemology to apply. I can only speak for political science, but I can say that it is now pretty much impossible to get published in any of the leading journals in the US unless you are doing some flavor of rational choice political science. Even in the department where I earned my degree, there was an enormous separation between the different camps. How much of a “concerted effort” would be enough? How would you presume to measure it? ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/68 "2009-01-07T12:39:33Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > I hesitate to dismiss Woit, Lee Smollin, and others of this opinion due to testimony on the SDMB. These aren’t crackpot physicists here, they are very much a part of the mainstream scientific establishment. There appear to be serious issues with the _culture_, not the epistemology. Yet you dismiss string theory based on the testimony of a _small_ minority of physicists? Is string theory testable? To the best of my knowledge, yes, string theory makes some falsifiable predictions. Papers proposing tests are published all the time: here’s an [example](http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.1431?context=quant-ph) of a proposed non-generic test at sub-Planck energies. Therefore is string theory science? Yes. Do physicists take string theory as axiomatic? Of course not. The very fact that physicists are _actively_ seeking tests to falsify string theory should be clue enough. > [@](#): > > What is still an open question for some in the social disciplines is whether this is the correct epistemology to apply. Where’s the debate? Any question related to how societies work is a scientific question. As a result, there’s only one epistemology relevant: science. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/69 "2009-01-07T16:15:20Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Yet you dismiss string theory based on the testimony of a _small_ minority of physicists? I have only said twice that I have no position on the matter since I am not a physicist. I’ve read two or three pop science books on the subject, so I am just a very interested layperson. I reject the idea that somehow the discipline of physics is impervious to some of the issues I raised above. > [@](#): > > Where’s the debate? Any question related to how societies work is a scientific question. As a result, there’s only one epistemology relevant: science. You take this to be axiomatic. It’s not. The question is whether a scientific epistemology produces better results than a non-scientific one. Based on my observations, it certainly does. Others disagree. But just like in the natural sciences, this was not known a priori. It took a fair amount of time and struggle before these matters were resolved. The quantitative political scientists and the qualitative ones have grown so far apart that it is often difficult to engage in a serious methodological discussion. Things had become so heated in the discipline that three influential political scientists attempted something like a grand unified method of doing political science. [KKV](http://press.princeton.edu/sample_chapters/king/) attempted to show how scientific/positivist logic could be applied to essentially qualitative analysis. They tried to define the central scientific logic that should flow through all political science. It is a very important book whose reception was mixed. This debate needs to occur and it needs to end with the complete victory for science. But it was not obvious in the beginning that this should be so, and it should not be taken as axiomatic. ---
**Author:** ![BetsQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@BetsQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BetsQ)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/70 "2009-01-07T16:28:27Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Where’s the debate? Any question related to how societies work is a scientific question. As a result, there’s only one epistemology relevant: science. Again, I disagree. Let’s take another example. [Patricia Hill Collins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Hill_Collins) is the current president of the American Sociological Association. Her work has been extremely influential in the study of race, class, and gender, especially in the US. However, she’s deeply critical of positivist, scientific epistemologies. Indeed, intersectionality (a theoretical position that largely grew out of her work) makes any sort of quantitative research very difficult, expect maybe at the macro level. **Maeglin** notes that economics is a field dominated by a single epistemology. Sociology tends to view that with mixed opinion. On the one hand, there’s a lot more agreement about what constitutes good economics, but on the other hand, there’s a lot less room for creativity and fresh insight. On the other hand, it’s the positivists who get all the funding. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/71 "2009-01-07T16:35:31Z")
[QUOTE=BetsQ] Again, I disagree. Let’s take another example. Patricia Hill Collins is the current president of the American Sociological Association. Her work has been extremely influential in the study of race, class, and gender, especially in the US. However, she’s deeply critical of positivist, scientific epistemologies. Indeed, intersectionality (a theoretical position that largely grew out of her work) makes any sort of quantitative research very difficult, expect maybe at the macro level. [/quote] And we know her work is correct because…? Intersectionality may have grown out of her work, but until it’s tested against hard data, empirically, what relevance does it have? Might this be the reason why positivists get all the funding? ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/72 "2009-01-07T17:28:26Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > This debate needs to occur and it needs to end with the complete victory for science. But it was not obvious in the beginning that this should be so, and it should not be taken as axiomatic. Of course it was obvious. _Any_ methodological naturalist is going to take this as axiomatic. The scientific method is the correct tool for investigating the physical world. You seem to agree, otherwise why would you want a complete victory for science? ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/73 "2009-01-07T18:20:59Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > Of course it was obvious. _Any_ methodological naturalist is going to take this as axiomatic. The scientific method is the correct tool for investigating the physical world. You seem to agree, otherwise why would you want a complete victory for science? I agree because at this point in time, positivist methodology is producing better results. But even the staunchest positivists in the social sciences understand that people do not behave in easily reducible and highly deterministic ways. Investigating human relations is _not_ the same as investigating the physical world. Most social scientists lack the ability to perform controlled experiments. It would be great if I could test the W/s hypothesis in political science by setting up a few governments and watching which ones topple. We can’t drop marbles and feathers in vacuum tubes at sea level. We cannot smash institutions or voting rules together to see what new particles emerge. In political science, theory has to precede experiment. This serious shortcoming has delayed the adoption of scientific methodology and epistemology. It took some time and some creativity to adapt this epistemology well enough to produce results. Rational choice use to be fringe; now the old-school qualitative scholars complain about the “colonization” of positivist methodology. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/74 "2009-01-07T18:45:51Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Investigating human relations is _not_ the same as investigating the physical world. Most social scientists lack the ability to perform controlled experiments. It would be great if I could test the W/s hypothesis in political science by setting up a few governments and watching which ones topple. We can’t drop marbles and feathers in vacuum tubes at sea level. We cannot smash institutions or voting rules together to see what new particles emerge. In political science, theory has to precede experiment. This serious shortcoming has delayed the adoption of scientific methodology and epistemology. It took some time and some creativity to adapt this epistemology well enough to produce results. Rational choice use to be fringe; now the old-school qualitative scholars complain about the “colonization” of positivist methodology. What you are describing is no different from any other observational science, of which there are many! We can no more topple governments than we can collide planets with black holes, or line planets up “just right” to observe gravitational lensing, yet astronomy remains a science. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/75 "2009-01-07T19:15:56Z")
> [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](#): > > What you are describing is no different from any other observational science, of which there are many! We can no more topple governments than we can collide planets with black holes, or line planets up “just right” to observe gravitational lensing, yet astronomy remains a science. It is no different from observational science when you reduce it to the level of absurdity. We can and have done experiments on the nature of light, radio waves, and matter. We have a clear idea as to the movement of the planets because their behavior has been remarkably consistent over time and because their component properties are well understood, though obviously there are significant gaps to our understanding. Pre-scientific societies were able to observe and try to explain the remarkable patterns among celestial bodies. These are, for the most part, deterministic objects. This was believed even before the epistemology of science was a twinkle in Karl Popper’s eye. (Un)fortunately, the behavior of people and institutions is not so deterministic. Planets, to the best of my knowledge, do not have opaque preferences, private information, and constrained rationality. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/76 "2009-01-07T19:59:09Z")
Sociology is a science to the extent that it gathers empirical information according to a rational process and develops hypotheses based on that data (of course, we’re leaving aside abject quackery here, a distraction that plagues even the “hard” sciences). The problem comes in testing these hypotheses, as the kind of experiments sociologists can set up is rather limited. Generally, I don’t see how a sociologist can perform meaningful controlled experiments, so he/she must rely on observational study to verify a hypothesis. This, I think, is where folks get hung up on whether sociology is/is not a science; if you don’t accept anything other than traditional controlled or natural experimentation as valid methods to test a hypothesis, then sociology is not a science. Still, IMO “what is science?”–much like “what is art?”–is a question deployed far more frequently to close a mind rather than open it… IMO an example of a somewhat successful sociological hypothesis is the [model of the Demographic Transition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition). Even if it has some gaps, the development and criticism of this model sure looks a lot like science to me… ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793/77 "2009-01-07T21:24:29Z")
One of the more interesting sociological experiments that I am aware of tested the theory of [interactional expertise](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactional_expertise). > [@](#): > > ‘Interactional expertise’ is developed through linguistic interaction without full scale practical immersion in a culture. Interactional expertise is the medium of communication in peer review in science, in review committees, and in interdisciplinary projects. It is also the medium of specialist journalists and of interpretative methods in the social sciences. We describe imitation game experiments designed to make concrete the idea of interactional expertise. **The experiments show that the linguistic performance of those well socialized in the language of a specialist group is indistinguishable from those with full blown practical socialization but distinguishable from those who are not well socialized.** The imitation game can also be used to indicate whether an individual can enter an esoteric domain and master the interactional expertise, a skill required by interpretative sociologists of science, anthropologists, ethnographers, and the like. My emphasis. Based on his interactional expertise, physicists were unable to distinguish Harry Collins, a sociologist, from an actual physicist. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-sociology-really-a-science/479793.md?page=3)