In 1974, legendary scientist and thinker Richard Feynman gave the commencement speech at Caltech, in which he described the soft sciences as a Cargo Cult, and explained why he thought that despite the vast effort had gone into them, they had failed to produce anything much of interest, and why all their predictions and recommendations were worse than useless.
https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
It's a great speech, and if you have any faith at all in things like psychology or medical "science", you should go and read it and ask yourself what, if anything, they have done to remedy the problems he outlined over the last fifty years.
And in fact there are many other problems with the soft sciences, that have collectively come to light over the last decade or so. And that has resulted in the 'Replication Crisis', where they've actually started to twig that they don't know a damned thing.
Which I think is a great development, and maybe even a sign that perhaps finally things are turning a corner and that maybe in future they might become real sciences that discover true things.
I will however wait until they actually discover some true or useful or even plausible things before I start to believe it.
This blog hopes to do better, and these are the money quotes from the speech as far as I am concerned:
Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in Cargo Cult Science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly.
It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.
Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.
There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.
In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.
That is the standard to which I aspire, and the standard to which I wish to be held.
I will do my best. I am trying to do my best. But it is very very hard.
So if you read this blog, and you spot places where I seem to be fooling myself, or seem to be trying to fool you, speak up.
Smash my stupid ideas to fragments, if you can. Speak clearly, and communicate honestly, and do not worry about offending me. I am a hard man to offend.
I will try to be grateful!