Sociology is one of the few fields that is not only unreliable, but systematically anti-reliable, especially when it comes to issues like race and gender, but also on issues about income distribution, and the causes of inequality. Pretty obvious why. As Moldbug said a long time ago, they've put all their chips on the blank slate dogma, and are willing to sacrifice the entire endeavor on it.
Having said that, there are a tiny number of really good sociologists, and many more good economists, who increasingly use genetic data to understand dynamics of equality, mate selection, etc.
These people are driven by ideology. They really want to matter and be a force of good.
Blank Slate is their dogma, like the bible is for a Christian. Thus, the environment has to be extremely important, there can be no doubt about it.
Btw an interesting study on classroom environment and its effect on academic achievement was done on identical twins. Some were in the same clasroom and others were separated.
If the teacher or other environmental factors have an effect, the twins who had been in different classrooms should be more different than those who had been together.
But, it turned out that there were no measurable effect.
Edit needed: “I speak of Myron A. Hofer’s 1994 New York Times’ opinion piece on The Bell Curve in which *she* rebuked the authors for not citing Rosenthal’s Pygmalion study…”
Edit needed: “Who can blame the teachers, though, when they’re being trained by the likes of Philip *Zimbado*? Yes, he of Stanford Prison Experiment fame…”
Edit needed? “It as if Rosenthal et al had measured the heights of the students, placidly recorded that the student body included a few 1-foot-tall students…”
Yes, Robert Rosenthal was a fraud. But, he never suffered for that. He remained a Harvard Professor until 1999 when he retired. Check his Wikipedia entry. Google him for a bit. You will find little to nothing about his fraudulent "Pygmalian" study from the late 1960s.
Social science is not “science”. Furthermore noisy and opinionated “social scientists” and wholly to blame for the public precipitous fall in trust in science.
Unfortunately the biological sciences seem to have fallen prey to “bad science”
Sociology is one of the few fields that is not only unreliable, but systematically anti-reliable, especially when it comes to issues like race and gender, but also on issues about income distribution, and the causes of inequality. Pretty obvious why. As Moldbug said a long time ago, they've put all their chips on the blank slate dogma, and are willing to sacrifice the entire endeavor on it.
Having said that, there are a tiny number of really good sociologists, and many more good economists, who increasingly use genetic data to understand dynamics of equality, mate selection, etc.
These people are driven by ideology. They really want to matter and be a force of good.
Blank Slate is their dogma, like the bible is for a Christian. Thus, the environment has to be extremely important, there can be no doubt about it.
Btw an interesting study on classroom environment and its effect on academic achievement was done on identical twins. Some were in the same clasroom and others were separated.
If the teacher or other environmental factors have an effect, the twins who had been in different classrooms should be more different than those who had been together.
But, it turned out that there were no measurable effect.
One study examining the effect of classroom sharing on twins: https://jech.bmj.com/content/jech/64/01/36.full.pdf
Edit needed: “I speak of Myron A. Hofer’s 1994 New York Times’ opinion piece on The Bell Curve in which *she* rebuked the authors for not citing Rosenthal’s Pygmalion study…”
All fixed
Edit needed: “Who can blame the teachers, though, when they’re being trained by the likes of Philip *Zimbado*? Yes, he of Stanford Prison Experiment fame…”
Edit needed? “It as if Rosenthal et al had measured the heights of the students, placidly recorded that the student body included a few 1-foot-tall students…”
Yes, Robert Rosenthal was a fraud. But, he never suffered for that. He remained a Harvard Professor until 1999 when he retired. Check his Wikipedia entry. Google him for a bit. You will find little to nothing about his fraudulent "Pygmalian" study from the late 1960s.
William Briggs once said something along the lines of social scientists do things to numbers you wouldn't want done to a child molester in prison
Social science is not “science”. Furthermore noisy and opinionated “social scientists” and wholly to blame for the public precipitous fall in trust in science.
Unfortunately the biological sciences seem to have fallen prey to “bad science”
And thus we are where we are! 🤷🏽♂️