http://nyti.ms/JPQdE6
Gary should stick to what he knows. The question is not whether the social sciences will (or should even try to) match the natural sciences, but whether communities can reflect critically and intelligently about the social, political, and economic forces that shape even their capacity to reflect critically. It is, as the Professor admits, a matter of the order of magnitude. Exact measurement is not needed to bake bread. If a person asks for bread, you wouldn’t give her a stone. Professor Gutting appears to suggest that if I can’t accurately measure the weight and volume of the bread, my estimation of the need is flawed, and I should therefore place no trust in it. We could even turn the tables on the Professor. Yes. It is true. Social scientific results–even sound results–suffer from being subject, once made public, to public opinion, journalistic sensationalism, and (always) politics. Yet–eg climate change–natural scientific results are subject to the same weakness. Moreover, whereas the (good) social sciences understand and embrace the fraught character of all public (and therefore political) knowledge, natural scientists often behave as though the public (and hence politics) is a nuisance. They seem to want it to simply go away. But this is not only wishful thinking. It is misanthropic. The human, the social, the political; that is what we are. And when reduced to mere data points, we cease to be what we are. Yes. The public is woefully ignorant over the limitations and promise of scientific research. Helping them become more knowledgeable is a matter of politics, economics, education, and communication. Welcome to my science.