Should "soft science" be considered real science? (lemmychan.org)

submitted 6 days ago by torik@lemmychan.org to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Vanth@reddthat.com 18 points 6 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.

this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2026

4 points (61.1% liked)

Asklemmy

54091 readers

139 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago

MODERATORS