> This may show up as lots of superfluous/unreproducible papers and journals many not even based on the scientific method.
seems very STEM-centric. It sounds like you're saying academia outside of the realm of science is useless which I completely disagree with.
As you continue, you must ignore more independent variables to conduct an experiment. By the time you get to social sciences where you're doing self reported survey studies on your sensation of gender acceptance, you cant really call it science anymore.
Not saying its useless, but ir absolutely should not be treated with the same level of reverence and trust as the harder sciences. People act like the government should be making policy decisions based on psychology thesis papers, or that id you disagree with some purple haired feminism professor, you are a science "denier."
Ultimately this is a function of poor education, and hivemind thinking caused by our inundation with news and various media.
But yeah, my point is STEM (in its colloquial usage) is really all that can be considered science and people tend to mistake any academic paper or public persona for science or a scientist respectively, and that just isn't so.
Sorry for the rant.
There are really two issues here which get conflated. First, social life is complex, people aren't like atoms, and all our explanations are gross simplifications. Second, yes, there's a lot of bullshit social science out there. But there's also some real social science, and it can address important issues.
Accrediting boards who demand proof that all departments produce relevant scholarly work are also to blame for the situation, as it leads to a proliferation of write-only journals that will publish any word salad that can be convincingly proven to be in dialogue with contemporary scholarship.
As someone who recovered from a mild case of being a STEMlord in college, grandiose claims of unearned self-importance are what turned me off from literature classes. I was always down to take a class in history, philosophy, or music if my schedule had an opening for that semester, but I took the minimum I could get away with in languages & literature.
Part of the problem is that English departments insist they are important because they “teach you how to be fully human”, which induces eye rolls: it’s like how the Quality Inn having the word “quality” in its name is unintentionally ironic. I still don’t know if the Dead Poets Society was meant as a satire of self-important literature classes or as a genuine homage to them.
At least the way it was taught when I was in high school, poetry was either cheesy rhymes or was the literary equivalent of debugging someone else’s code golf. It wasn’t until I discovered the authors Mark Danielewski and Christian Bök that I understood the joy in playing with language for its own sake.
Took a class on Shakespeare centered around recreating the plays as they were meant to be played, and the historical context they were played in. Fascinating stuff, and a lot less susceptible to pure rhetorical analysis nonsense.
I always find this funny to read, because that's more or less what happened to me. I was originally very interested in philosophy and the classics, but I just couldn't keep up with the reading and paper assignments. I'm not a bad writer in general, but I'm terrible at writing academic papers. I picked CS/math because I was tired of staring at a blank word document and slowly panicking for a week. with CS/math, I could just sit down and start making progress immediately on a problem set or coding project.
I see the point of what you're saying though. there's a limit to how rigorous an english class can practically be. the difference between bad and mediocre writing is mostly mechanics. but what's the difference between good and great writing? I doubt the "experts" could even agree, let alone come up with a rubric for grading papers.
When I was young I believed things outside of the sciences and math were useless. As I've grown older, I realize the tremendous value of the arts, humanities, and other studies. They're just not as obviously functional or as easily quantifiable and much of this work is difficult. These studies help us think as humans and not machines. Yes, they can be gamed by disingenuous and often do get low rewards in society, but they're not inherently useless disciplines. The other studies provide much value to what makes life worth living, IMO.
Literature, art, the human state. I love science, don't get me wrong, but I also enjoy the rest.
It’s not that you cannot, it’t about the likelihood.
What percentage of laywers, politicians, and economists are worth more than STEM graduates?
How much relative power does each sector have?
[1] Technically a social science, certainly not a hardcore STEM subject.
It kinda sounds like you don't know what the humanities are.
Just to be clear, you're both kind of right, but I take objection to your overly aggressive stance on this where you rebut and accuse without providing any sort of evidence.