spoiler

Personally? No, absolutely not. There should be no differentiating between what can be measured, and what cannot.

I can’t help but look at the reproducibility issue in “Psychology” and notice, what did they do about it? Nothing. It just exists. It’s not real science.

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    2·
    23 days ago

    The study of human behavior is more difficult to measure, but can absolutely be held to scientific rigor. In fact, all branches of science have some degree of overlap and interconnection, and thus have blurrier lines than you might expect.

  • disregardable@lemmy.zip
    2·
    24 days ago

    If you refuse to consider anything other than randomized control trials science, then you believe we don’t have proof that smoking causes cancer.

  • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
    1·
    24 days ago

    Yes. “Hard” sciences aren’t as perfectly objective like TV would have one believe. Plenty of hard sciences are affected by the replication crisis, like geology and astronomy where one can’t set up controlled experiments, same as soft sciences. All of them should strive to develop the best model, break the model, improve the model, repeat.

  • corvus@lemmy.ml
    1·
    23 days ago

    There are lots of scientific groups that work in the so called soft sciences that apply the usual methods of the hard sciences. It’s not about soft or hard, it’s about good or bad.

  • UNY0N@feddit.org
    1·
    24 days ago

    Absolutely, yes.

    The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge through careful observation, rigorous skepticism, hypothesis testing, and experimental validation.

    Any observable phenomenon should be studied using the scientific method. The alternatives are superstition or ignorance.

    Psychology is a good example. It has been limited by our technology and our morals. The human brain is extremely complicated, and we cannot just disrupt peoples lives to create ideal testing conditions. But that doesn’t mean that psychology is not science. It just means that it has unique challenges.