Quote:
Originally Posted by Itse
As someone who's dabbled in many social sciences, I'd actually agree that there is a real problem of worthless pseudoscience or now debunked theories being treated as relevant, and I doubt the same problem exists with hard sciences. However, it's more an issue of wasting disproportionate amounts of time with what is in essence the history of the field. (Creating a small army of confused and/or frustrated students in the process.) Whether or not for example Lacan is pseudoscience doesn't much matter because you're not expected to take it as a fact. It's just "interesting" or "a tool for analysis".
By far the worst I've gotten into is economics, where people constantly refer to unproven or in some cases even debunked macroeconomic models as if they were facts. Some of those people even make serious high-level economic decisions based on them, often causing serious harm. (Mostly to someone else.)
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I would agree with this. Pseudoscience definitely is more problematic in the social sciences than the natural sciences, but that has not stopped "junk research" from coming out of the natural sciences. Whether it be research into vaccines and drugs, or the cause of specific illnesses, or research into causes of specific natural phenomena, there are more than enough examples of the natural sciences getting caught up in the same BS. Scientists are human and they have a need to get paid as well. Just look at how long big tobacco was able to use science to obfuscate the facts surrounding the dangers of their product. Now look at the science being manufactured to protect the O&G industry. Science is only as good as the people doing it, and the peers used to verify their findings. That is fact regardless of your field of study. Any yes, I agree that economics is one of the worst offenders of abuse of disproven theory. The Nobel committee should really rescind a prize or two they have awarded in that field.
