I have tried to keep an open mind, but I simply cannot tolerate this any longer and must rant and vent my frustration.
--These people don't even know how to count! Granted, most social problems are complex, such as this abuse and neglect of seniors business, but how can these so called "scientists" not even try to put some sort of structure in place to analyze the problem? It's as if they accept it as a nebulous and unsolvable concern and then immediately set out to find numbers--any numbers--to support their cause without having properly defined terms, conditions, context, scope... --Phone surveys, that's all they know how to do! The real kicker is that this so-called "systematic" review actually lumps everything together and claims that a single number summarizes dozens of studies in completely different contexts! "--Lo, the answer is... uh... 6%! Yeah... that's about right." --Idiots!
How can I do a proper assessment given these piss poor primary data--if you can even call them such? What they've found are obvious and trivial effects which even those of us with minimal reasoning ability can conclude with a bit of thinking, whereas the information we actually need never even crossed the minds of the researchers. Instead, there are a myriad of narratives, experiences, historical backgrounds that numb the quantitative mind and further complicate the problem instead of clarifying or resolving it!
Reductionist thinking is not demeaning to social problems, nor does it oversimplify if used properly. What's preventing these social "scientists" from applying the most basic logical models and structures to their pet problems? Is it the fear that the problems would crystalize and dissolve? Is it the subsequent petty fear that their lives and pursuits would appear foolish? Well, I guess the latter is perhaps justified.
That I had at one time thought I could study social science is simply laughable.
Fuck social science.
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3 comments:
awful that you thought it okay to use the word retarded as pejorative.
You seem like such an asshole. The fallacy of Hasty Generalization always seems to rear its ugly head; yea like all economists, historians or anthropologists use phone surveys to conduct their research.
The natural sciences contain many of the same problems as social sciences which you are bitching about. Read some Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend; the great advances of the natural sciences never relied on the strict methods of the day, revolutionary science always broke with the logical and scientific methods of natural sciences; otherwise science would never have gotten past Aristotle.
Funny (and sad) that only the most violent rants get attention from anonymous readers...
I admit that I was being uncharitable to the specific paper I was referring to, but I make no apologies. The quality of social science research varies greatly, which only contributes to the general public's confusion about it and subsequent not taking it seriously. There is a reason why numbers and strict methodologies are given preference: they render research less biased and more comparable. Part of my frustration is that this tool often seems beyond the reach of those working outside of the natural sciences. I sympathize with the nature of social science and the difficulty in applying strict and high quality research methods that yield hard data, but this is no excuse for neglecting the fundamental issue that such methods exist, and social scientists--if they consider themselves scientists--ought to honestly try to meet such standards. The failure of which greatly annoys me.
For Anonymous 2, yes, I happen to have read Kuhn in detail, and I'm not sure you understand him all that well. Revolutionary science works outside of the scientific frameworks of the day by reformulating the established theories in order to gain further understanding of the subject. Logic and scientific methods still hold true, even if the new, paradigm-shifting theories were rooted in a flash of insight or a thought experiment. However, when the research is an experiment meant to gather further data on a not-to-revolutionary observation in the same theoretical framework, it has to be done with the appropriate, accepted methodology, or it is simply bad experimental research. Damage is often done when bad research makes a remarkable claim, even if the claim supports an intuition in the layman. That's the sort of thing towards which I have violent emotional reactions.
The paper I referred to is cited below. The issue is very relevant and important and more good research needs to be done before any hasty policy decisions are made, one way or another. To haphazardly lump together data and make a claim despite glaring incomparability is not only bad science (or rather not science at all), but also simply irresponsible.
Cooper, C., Selwood, A., & Livingston, G. (2008). The prevalence of elder abuse and neglect: a systematic review. Age and Aging, 37, 151-160.
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