To be fair, couldn’t the same be said about many fields? Like an old physics professor of mine used to criticize certain aspects of theoretical physics for some of the same problems listed above. (Stacking up papers that have no technological application or even experimental verifiability)
And I thought one product of the psychological sciences is better statistical methods for testing and assessing things like intellectual ability or other psychological traits. These are widely used in school systems for example and Im sure there have been advances in the last few decades.
That being said, behavioral sciences is having a bit of a low point in its reputation even within economics, I think. Not least because the field seems ripe for charlatanism (see the case of Francesca Geno). I always thought that the behavioral economics papers are a bit too cute and probably don’t translate to the real world when stakes are high
About Francesca Geno, I posted about her a while ago: #682960
Indeed, behavioral science is going through a bit of an existential crisis.
one product of the psychological sciences is better statistical methods
I didn't know that. Not too surprising, seen how important statistics are in those sciences.
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Ah I must have missed that post, would have liked to engage on it.
At my former university, the chair of the political science department published a paper with a grad student. The paper won an award and the grad student had a job lined up at a top tier university. It later came out that the student had completely faked the data. He was so brazen that he even lied about grant funding in the "thanks" section of the paper.
What kinda pissed me off was that the tenured professor who was supposedly overseeing this research got little to no blowback. if you're going to put your name on it, and if you're the senior author, and you're ready to claim credit, I think you should also be penalized if the paper turns out to be fraudulent--even if you weren't the one to actually engage in the fraud.
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Like an old physics professor of mine used to criticize certain aspects of theoretical physics for some of the same problems listed above. (Stacking up papers that have no technological application or even experimental verifiability)
Theoretical particle physics, string theory, etc come to mind reading this comment ;) Got few colleagues in those fields, so gotta be careful saying the quiet part out loud.
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What kind of physics do you do?
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