The question of whether or not, and in what ways, the social sciences are scientific is an interesting one. But the way it is often taken up (e.g., at the discussion to which you link) just gives me a headache: it’s not so much the assertions themselves as the air of certitude and tone of lofty dismissal. Ok, it’s the assertions too. I particularly object to the outright dismissal of entire disciplines on the basis of ill-formed and inaccurate generalizations and half-truths.

The propagation of half-digested chunks of Popper is a real menace. I can’t help thinking that a healthy dose of Lakatos would do plenty of people a power of good, perhaps leading to fewer outbreaks of this kind of obviously dumb nonsense.

The problem with popular takes on the philosophy of science is perhaps that practitioners in the ‘hard’ sciences often don’t seem to get beyond Popper, while the whackier elements elsewhere in academe seem to leapfrog straight to Feyerabend and beyond.

Physics-envy really is a pretty unattractive condition.

Ha! Exactly. Actually, by Megan’s criteria, Dr Marvin Monroe is a paragon of science. Precise hhypotheses. Eminently falsifiable. And so on.

Sociology can be very good, but usually when it’s interdisciplinary. Murray and Hernstein’s Bell Curve, for example, was superbly done methodologically. But most sociologists I’ve come across have been more interested in feel-good results than in real research.

But what I really wanted to say is that Steve Levitt cannot be a real economist because he has been described as rabidly antigun.

:-)

Brad DeLong

I need to write something about Popper (I need to write something at all …). Nine times out of ten, when a scientist says something stupid about anything, you can trace the problem back to Popper. Maybe we should have a Karl Popper Symposium or themed week or something.

Also, I think “sociology is crap” is one to put alongside “the French don’t do mathematical economics” as things that a surprising number of economists believe without ever having thought to check them.