Dec 22, 2024 01:12 AM
Unscientific social science is trading under false pretences
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opi...-pretences
EXCERPTS: The question of whether there is, or can be, a social science has been a contentious issue throughout my 50-plus years of being a “social scientist”. [...] Whether social research is scientific is not a simple question ... Nevertheless, I suggest that there is much work by social scientists that trades falsely under the label.
There are multiple reasons. One is external pressure to produce large numbers of research publications in conditions that lack the resources necessary to do this while sustaining quality. A second is that there are practical or political commitments on the part of researchers that encourage bias – or at least exaggeration of the likely validity of what are viewed as positive findings...
[...] There are also social scientists who believe that the very claim to scientific knowledge is ethically or politically unacceptable because they view it as “epistemic domination” that supports the socio-political status quo. They misread it as necessarily blaming people from oppressed or marginalised communities for their own situations, and silencing those who protest. [...] If, in these contexts, they were to announce that their sole aim was to spread their own political opinions, they would probably get little financial support.
There are also researchers who present their work as literature or art, with the concept of social science expanded to incorporate this. But is this legitimate? Sometimes what is produced amounts to little more than agit-prop. Rarely does it meet high literary or artistic standards.
[...] if social scientists do not work hard to check that their conclusions are true, and do not limit themselves to what can be justified on that basis, they too are in the fake news business... (MORE - details)
Shoddy commentaries—a quick and dirty route to higher impact numbers—are on the rise
https://www.science.org/content/article/...s-are-rise
EXCERPT: Science and Retraction Watch’s investigation suggests authors, journals, and institutions all benefit from the scheme, which floods the literature with poor-quality publications and casts doubt on metrics of scholarly output and impact. For authors, commentaries can be a quick and easy way to amass publications and citations. Authors “just want a PubMed-indexed article. That’s it,” says Shirish Rao, a recent medical graduate who works at a hospital in Mumbai, India.
Commentaries are an ideal avenue because “you don’t really need original data,” so AI tools can generate them in almost no time, explains Rao, who is a member of the Association for Socially Applicable Research, a nonprofit think tank. And because they are rarely peer reviewed, they are typically easier to get into journals than a research paper. Publishing these pieces can be good business for journals, too. For one, many charge publication fees for commentaries... (MORE - details)
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opi...-pretences
EXCERPTS: The question of whether there is, or can be, a social science has been a contentious issue throughout my 50-plus years of being a “social scientist”. [...] Whether social research is scientific is not a simple question ... Nevertheless, I suggest that there is much work by social scientists that trades falsely under the label.
There are multiple reasons. One is external pressure to produce large numbers of research publications in conditions that lack the resources necessary to do this while sustaining quality. A second is that there are practical or political commitments on the part of researchers that encourage bias – or at least exaggeration of the likely validity of what are viewed as positive findings...
[...] There are also social scientists who believe that the very claim to scientific knowledge is ethically or politically unacceptable because they view it as “epistemic domination” that supports the socio-political status quo. They misread it as necessarily blaming people from oppressed or marginalised communities for their own situations, and silencing those who protest. [...] If, in these contexts, they were to announce that their sole aim was to spread their own political opinions, they would probably get little financial support.
There are also researchers who present their work as literature or art, with the concept of social science expanded to incorporate this. But is this legitimate? Sometimes what is produced amounts to little more than agit-prop. Rarely does it meet high literary or artistic standards.
[...] if social scientists do not work hard to check that their conclusions are true, and do not limit themselves to what can be justified on that basis, they too are in the fake news business... (MORE - details)
Shoddy commentaries—a quick and dirty route to higher impact numbers—are on the rise
https://www.science.org/content/article/...s-are-rise
EXCERPT: Science and Retraction Watch’s investigation suggests authors, journals, and institutions all benefit from the scheme, which floods the literature with poor-quality publications and casts doubt on metrics of scholarly output and impact. For authors, commentaries can be a quick and easy way to amass publications and citations. Authors “just want a PubMed-indexed article. That’s it,” says Shirish Rao, a recent medical graduate who works at a hospital in Mumbai, India.
Commentaries are an ideal avenue because “you don’t really need original data,” so AI tools can generate them in almost no time, explains Rao, who is a member of the Association for Socially Applicable Research, a nonprofit think tank. And because they are rarely peer reviewed, they are typically easier to get into journals than a research paper. Publishing these pieces can be good business for journals, too. For one, many charge publication fees for commentaries... (MORE - details)