Sociology is a Science

Not usually my favorite scientist, I enjoyed Neil deGrasse Tyson interviewed by Ben Shapiro mostly because I agreed with Tyson and I was impressed with his engagement style as Shapiro baited him on genderism as a progressive cause. Shapiro wanted Tyson to say that subjective claims of gender identity are not scientific: sex is scientific; gender is based on sex. Tyson pointed to the objective reality of sociology which says that it is worthy of scientific study to discover what it is in a social context that people believe is true. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson - The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 72

835,919 views Oct 13, 2019 -- Neil deGrasse Tyson — renowned astrophysicist, host of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" on PBS, the "StarTalk Radio" podcast, and best-selling author of "Letters from an Astrophysicist" — joins Ben to discuss science, religion, morality, climate change, transgenderism, abortion, and much more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBxAQYmPHDA

Ben Shapiro committed the same error as progressives and accepted by conservatives and traditionalists such as Keynesian and Chicago economists who believe that as man-made artifacts, the social sciences are subjective and ultimately arbitrary. 

Posted to Galt’s Gulch Online -- 18 March 2016

Yes, exactly, that was my point to jlc. Not alone here, she prides herself in having majored in “real” science, not social science. But “real” science is plagued with positivism and the eternal harvesting of one more data point in pursuit of inductive truth.

 

As I have pointed out, in the sociology classes I took while majoring in criminology, and finishing a masters in social science, we actually did study the scientific method, at every level, at least at the beginning of the semester. (In the world standard textbook by Sir Anthony Giddens (architect of “New Labour”), it is discussed twice, once at the outset and again with more detail at the end of the book.) Moreover, in sociology, we study the origins and development of the science, sometimes to our own dismay.

 

Many in sociology accept physics as the gold standard of science. They point out that you can find many recent social science papers that cite Max Weber but no one in Physics Letters A-G or Physics Today cites James Clerk Maxwell in support of an argument. Conversely, few sociology papers cite research less than five years old. Physics is always about citing the latest research in your paper.

 

But that speaks exactly to the point. We do not bury our story of development, the false paths, the overturned assumptions, the backpedaling and even the curious, if not hypocritical, yet highly rewarding research of Marxists who set up a consumer polling business. (Read Paul Lazarsfeld in Wikipedia.) 

 

I had a 200-level class, required not only for sociology, but also for social workers in Research Methods. Every week, we chose and criticized two peer reviewed papers of our own selection. "Can undergraduates meaningfully criticize peer-reviewed papers?" I asked. “Start with the math,” the professor said. You don't get that in physics.

 

Social sciences obviously are plagued by many problems, fundamental conceptual problems. They appear as basic ideological problems. The reason that I did not pursue a master's in criminology was that there was nothing more to learn: race, gender, and capitalist oppression pretty much defined the sources of all of our problems. By choosing an open program in “social science” I put together an approved study of transnational white collar crime by taking graduate classes in criminology, U.S. foreign policy, economics, and geography. 

 

But by then - as opposed to when I was first a freshman in 1967 - my understanding of Objectivism was better integrated.

[Edited for typography and spelling 7 September 2022.]

 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

The Scientific Method

The Scientific Method Revisited

Is Physics a Science? 

Is Philosophy a Science? 

The Pretense of Sociology 

Sociology: A Defense and a Call for Reform 

Engineers and Jihadi 

 

 

You Only Have to be Better to be Equal

She’s Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and other Nerdy  Stuff, Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders, eds., (Seal Press, 2006) is an anthology of autobiographical vignettes.  In each, you meet a woman.  Some are introduced as girls.  One enters when she was a man.  Overall, each found fun, validation, achievement, intellectual challenge and social challenge in her attraction for science, technology, engineering or mathematics.  Generalizations are not easy.  These are 24 insightful essays from a field of over 200 entries.  As a guy myself, I do not get much chance to spend all the time I want with two dozen female nerds.  This is highly recommended.

Over on Prof. Mark Perry’s blog, Carpe Diem (now with the American Enterprise Institute) are numbers about the huge gender gap in the SATs, the Scholastic Aptitude Tests that figure so largely in college admissions.  The reality of the gap is unarguable. So are the social policy implications.  On the almost-free market blog, OrgTheory, is a link about gender bias in science research hiring.  Even women who head labs preferentially hire and pay men in excess of women with equal qualifications. 

The full depth and breadth of prejudices active in our society is astonishing and disappointing.  While Asians tend to score higher on SATs than Caucasians, they need to: the averages are that an Asian needs to be 140 points higher to get into the same college program as a non-Asian.  The fear is that we will have “too many” in college, as 100 years ago Ivy League WASPS worried about having too many Jews and limited their enrollment, despite their qualifications.

 After California forbade state universities to consider race in admissions, the percentage of Asian students at the University of California at Berkeley rose from 37 percent to 44 percent. At the California Institute of Technology, which similarly doesn't look at race, more than one-third of students are Asian.

Asian-American students who enrolled at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina in 2001 and 2002 scored 1457 out of 1600 on the math and reading portion of the SAT, compared to 1416 for whites, 1347 for Hispanics and 1275 for blacks, according to a 2011 study co-authored by Duke economist Peter Arcidiacono. Read here: Asians are the New Jews

Incidentally, SAT scores are at a 40-year low.  (Washington Post here.) But do not blame public education.  Soviet agriculture almost worked.  Maybe this experiment just needs to run a little longer, too… 

The widest policy implication is that our culture is collectivized to the point where individual achievement is difficult to perceive.  Should we adopt numbers in place of names?

Also on Necessary Facts:

• Nerd Nation: Danika McKeller, Natalie Portman, and Felicia Day 
• Nerd Nation 4.5: Miyiam Bialik
• Nerd Nation 4.0: Even GQ Says Smart is Sexy
• Nerd Nation 3.0: How Dungeons and Dragons Changed My Life