To Fix the Social Sciences, Look to the “Dark Ages” of Medicine

Whether this is because of sloppy methodology, ideological infection, or other problems, the result is that even if there are right and wrong answers to many of our questions about human action, most social scientists are not yet in a position to find them. Among the issues that plague contemporary social scientific research:

So what does an example of good social scientific work — one that is based firmly in the scientific attitude, uses empirical evidence to challenge an intuitive theoretical hypothesis, and employs experimental methods to measure human motivation directly through human action — look like? Iyengar and her colleague Mark Lepper set up a controlled consumer choice experiment in a grocery store where shoppers were offered the chance to taste different kinds of jam.

Source: thereader.mitpress.mit.edu