I see this as an argument for adding more STEM to every degree plan. There's unavoidable crossover, and people need intuition to properly question unfounded claims.
It’s very easy to just routinely apply methods without properly reasoning about the underlying assumptions.
Had the original theory simply included a "measured" coefficient, the debunking would have been much weaker and never made it into a gotcha story for bystanders to enjoy. This was sloppy from the outset.
What we need isn't stronger technical skills, but strong self-correction mechanisms and incentive structures.
(Ironically, the management consultant who orchestrated this whole ploy is in the field of group psychology - so perhaps it was performance art all along)
> “If she had studied 1/10th of what she said she studied,” says Sokal, “she would have seen right through Losada.”
The author making the bad claims seems to have a pretty decent math education. Or she's lying about what she studied...
Wake me up when social science can reproduce their studies and I'll consider it a science. Until then, I consider it akin to "humours".