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To call social science “science” is to completely misunderstand what science is and does. Descriptive statistics are about a scientific as social science gets. Unless and until you have falsifiable hypotheses, it ain’t really science folks. That means you have to have theories which can be proved or disproved, and yield repeatable results by different researchers. You can’t do that with Social[ism]ology, Economics or Political Science. Using mathematics to describe things is great, but that still doesn’t make it science. That’s the same cr@p as so called “scientific socialism” which was certainly not scientific. Grrrr.

I didn't quite "get" this article, but it reminded me of a time in my cultural anthropology graduate course when the good doctor said, "I hope everyone considers what we are doing here science... who here considers what we are doing to be science?"

Everyone raised their hand except for me.

In answer to the inquiring looks I said, "Science is when you mix two things together and something explodes. This is philosophy."

I don't know if I did right to put it so bluntly, but for pete's sake, we were reading the Marvin Harris/Mary Douglas essays on why Jews don't eat pork, and I'm sorry, speculation like that is NOT science.

For qualitative researchers to attempt to make their work statistically

Part of the problem right there. While statistical mechanics works to a degree in physics, statistical history doesn't have enough degrees of freedom by a factor of 10^22 to make those necessary simplifying assumptions. Besides, statistics is for quantitative researchers.

Rarely have I read such gobbledegook. In essence they’re saying, “Let’s toss aside hard science based on rigorous measurement and statistical analysis and replace it with preconceived outcomes which can somehow be justified by whatever means we can conceive.”

>Academics Need Inferiority Complex

----------------------------------------------------

Really don't mind
If you sit this one out

My words but a whisper
Your deafness a SHOUT

I may make you feel
But I can't make you think
Your sperm's in the gutter
Your love's in the sink

So you ride yourselves over the fields
And you make all your animal deals
And your wise men don't know how it feels
To be thick as a brick

And the sand-castle virtues are all swept away
In the tidal destruction, the moral melee
The elastic retreat rings the close of play
As the last wave uncovers the newfangled way

But your new shoes are worn at the heels
Your suntan does rapidly peel
And your wise men don't know how it feels
To be thick as a brick

And the love that I feel
Is so far away
I'm a bad dream that I just had today
And you shake your head
And say it's a shame

Spin me back down the years
To the days of my youth
Draw the lace and black curtains
And shut out the whole truth
Spin me down the long ages
Let them sing the song...

I love how CS Lewis cast the Social Sciences in the first of the Screwtape Letters. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in what the Devil thinks about the Social Sciences (at least according to CS Lewis!).