ABSTRACT: (1) The social sciences make use of scientific method, experimental repetition, and peer review to help account for the complexity of their subject matter. (2) The scientific method helps organize research and form testable claims about subject mater. (3) Experimental repetition helps ensure findings in an experiment are attributable in other cases (or at least, to what degree). (4) Peer review helps preserve soundness of method in interpreting and handling of data. (5) All of these aid the social scientist in dealing with their subject; and whatever the social phenomena.
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Given that the social sciences encounter a variety of challenges in making objective claims of social behavior (where the natural …show more content…
Here, peer review, of course, is the evaluation of any truth claims made by social scientists by other social scientists in the same field (in whatever field of social sciences, in specific). Peer review effectively adds a third way by which the social sciences can account for the complexity of the material they study: social phenomena. The scientific method helps social scientists furnish testable claims about what they observe, and likewise, repetition helps ensure what they observe in their experiment is observable in others. But peer review is necessary when it comes to the handling and publishing of data in the social sciences, and namely to critique findings in the data, as well as the methods of gathering or analyzing that data. So even though (for instance), a social scientist may have crafted an experiment to help study a certain social phenomena—and even though it can be repeated—other analysis, via peer review, is absolutely necessary in the social sciences to give critical insight into the structural flaws in research, or the gathering or interpreting of data. This peer-review in the social sciences therefore act as a third way to account for the complexities inherent in the human/social subjects of study in the social sciences. It is also vital to the establishment of newer, more developed, and better methods of analysis within the social sciences. For after all, if no one even checked each other’s work, and if no one ever went back to test the validity of claims made in a given research report, the result would be a “science” composed of true-seeming but not necessarily valid claims about the nature of social behavior. Different perspectives of phenomena, as well as one’s own study of those phenomena, are valuable means of enhancing the social scientist’s grasp of the complexity in their subject
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Given that the social sciences encounter a variety of challenges in making objective claims of social behavior (where the natural …show more content…
Here, peer review, of course, is the evaluation of any truth claims made by social scientists by other social scientists in the same field (in whatever field of social sciences, in specific). Peer review effectively adds a third way by which the social sciences can account for the complexity of the material they study: social phenomena. The scientific method helps social scientists furnish testable claims about what they observe, and likewise, repetition helps ensure what they observe in their experiment is observable in others. But peer review is necessary when it comes to the handling and publishing of data in the social sciences, and namely to critique findings in the data, as well as the methods of gathering or analyzing that data. So even though (for instance), a social scientist may have crafted an experiment to help study a certain social phenomena—and even though it can be repeated—other analysis, via peer review, is absolutely necessary in the social sciences to give critical insight into the structural flaws in research, or the gathering or interpreting of data. This peer-review in the social sciences therefore act as a third way to account for the complexities inherent in the human/social subjects of study in the social sciences. It is also vital to the establishment of newer, more developed, and better methods of analysis within the social sciences. For after all, if no one even checked each other’s work, and if no one ever went back to test the validity of claims made in a given research report, the result would be a “science” composed of true-seeming but not necessarily valid claims about the nature of social behavior. Different perspectives of phenomena, as well as one’s own study of those phenomena, are valuable means of enhancing the social scientist’s grasp of the complexity in their subject