this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
1098 points (99.3% liked)

Science Memes

11440 readers
668 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] frezik@midwest.social 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

That's pretty much where I was going. What are soft sciences supposed to do when experimental methods are either impractical or unethical? Give up?

If anything, fields like physics are in a privileged position where they can do the scientific method to the letter. Acting snooty about it is simply insulting and unhelpful.

[–] exocrinous@startrek.website 1 points 7 months ago (3 children)

What are soft sciences supposed to do when experimental methods are either impractical or unethical?

Same thing astronomy did.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Astronomy has roughly a 400 year head start on most of these. Thousands of years if you're counting astrology (which was good observations mixed together with nonsense).

[–] exocrinous@startrek.website 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's irrelevant. Astronomy and polsci can both only test their hypotheses through observation.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

And Astronomy has had much, much longer to make those observations. They can also gather potentially millions of data points instead of five.