Comment by nilirl
2 hours ago
Maybe they've been more consistent but the strength of their position is not measured by my inconsistency.
Look at how much "trust me, I've got training, I know what's good, I know what's already right" is in their argument.
What is their actual point? That we can say across the board that good research must have easy-to-control experimentation and guarantee novelty?
Good research is field dependent; some fields are younger than others, some fields have an easier time controlling experiments than others.
I'm saying what matters is what people care about. My point about stances being political is because what gets funded is what people care about, not what can guarantee the highest confidence using research design.
My point is that their stance is political too, because it says 'I don't care about this like how they care about this, so I think it should get cut'.
Their position is not some innocent defense of empiricism, it's a political stance that says "these questions don't matter, I already know how the world works."
> That we can say across the board that good research must have easy-to-control experimentation and guarantee novelty?
That is not my point, but it is a true statement, yes [1]. Science without controls is not science. Science without novelty is called an undergraduate lab exercise.
> Good research is field dependent
Controls and novelty and rigor are not field-dependent. If you want that, go do English Literature or Philosophy or something. They love to entertain unresolvable debates about post-modernism.
[1] Modulo the "easy" part. I feel like you put this in as some kind of emergency exit slide from the debate, so I'll just say up front that good science doesn't have to have "easy" controls. It must have controls.
I may have moved some of the goal posts but you refuse to engage with your own bias. I think we can move on.