Tom the Exterminator on the Middle East

[Naji Dahi]

You are right. Psychology is the closest to "hard" science there is. Econ,
Poli sci, Socio, and others are "soft" sciences. Experimentation is not
advanced in those fields as it is in psych. The fields still realy on
statistical manipulation in their "scientific" method, ie, forming a
hypothesis, soliciting indicators to measure the variavles of the hypothesis
and using a statistical measure (pearson's r, gamma, etc...) to "prove" the
hypothesis.

Naji

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miles Jackson" <cqmv at pdx.edu>
To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 8:44 AM
Subject: Re: Tom the Exterminator on the Middle East


>
>
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, Naji Dahi wrote:
>
> > Unfortuantely in social science you cannot prove causation, you can only
> > show correlation. The "scientific" methods in social science is, for the
> > most, part based on correlation in social science.
>
> This is a bizarre statement.  Fields like cognitive psychology rely
> primarily on experimentation, and fields like astronomy rely on
> nonexperimental (correlational) research.  And by the way, scientific
> studies cannot prove causation (remember the fallacy of affirming the
> consequent?).
>
> Miles
>
>