(Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge)
Behavioral science research, it turns out, has very, very little in common with the kind of science done at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
I read this stunning, devastating, article while flying over Nevada today:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/making-it-all_1042807.html?page=1
If the physical sciences were as ideologically-driven and devoid of rigor as this piece suggests the behavioral sciences to be, I wouldn’t have survived to read it. Firemen would still be trying to extinguish the flames from the twisted metal of our flying machine at the end of the runway in Salt Lake City.
This is a real eye-opener. And it was particularly astonishing to see even Stanley Milgram’s famous Yale “obedience experiment” looking more than a little bit flimsy.
If you’re at all interested in the social sciences, or even if you’ve just occasionally been aggravated by headlines (“Religious People More Prone to Fear Women and Hate Puppies,” say, or “Political Conservatives Motivated by Resentment over Defective Childhood Potty Training, Scientists Reveal”) summarizing the latest purportedly scientific research, take the time to read this fascinating essay.
Here, by the way, are a couple of likely specimens to which I myself have called attention over the past short while:
“Study Finds People’s Conservative and Liberal Traits Show Up in Their Twitter Vocabulary”
“There May Be a Scientific Cure for Your Appalling Religious and Political Beliefs”
Posted from San Francisco, California
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