
The Trouble with Scientists: Tackling human biases in science - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/the-trouble-with-scientists
======
nerder
The article makes some good points (bad points, too) but the title is
misleading sensationalism. You can't draw conclusions about science as a whole
based on faults in in the fields of psychology and sociology. If anything the
problems in those fields derive from their influence from the field of
philosophy. These problems tend to disappear as fields of science become less
and less philosophical.

~~~
stdbrouw
Psychology is about as far from philosophy as you can get. It relies almost
exclusively on experimental evidence and rigorous operationalization of
concepts. Similarly the medical sciences are having lots of trouble with
nonreplicable research, and I don't think biology is particularly
philosophical. The interesting part in fact is that it's not necessarily
science or its methods that is at fault here, it is scientists and the social
systems that they work in – the publication system, the peer review system,
the tenure system. In that sense, the title is very apropos.

~~~
nerder
What you're missing is the usual scientific approaches don't work in
psychology so they've turned to philosophers and "philosophers of science" to
come up with ways of demonstrating truth. Psychology may be rigorous compared
to philosophy but it isn't when compared to the hard sciences.

> The interesting part in fact is that it's not necessarily science or its
> methods that is at fault here...

The problem is we have "sciences" that don't use scientific rigor and may be
incapable of handling tools as complex as p-values without misunderstanding
and abusing them. To me it's the lack of science and its methods that's at
fault here.

