Okay, I’ve discovered one more thing I miss about teaching: a captive audience when I want to rant. Lucky I’ve got the blog, huh?
Psychologists and sociologists earned a lot of rant-time in my classes because they specialize in asking leading questions, ignoring their own cultural biases, twisting numbers to suit the conclusions they’ve already got in their heads, and blithely calling the results ‘science’ to get mucho funding and public recognition.
This recent New Yorker cartoon -- I mean, 'illustrated laughing square', is not helping my mood today. It's Aristotle on a stick. ILLUSTRATION: PHILIPPE PETIT-ROULET, copyright a zillion times by The New Yorker, go see the original article for more on how science is just now figuring out the most obvious facts of the human condition: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks.
Case in point: another study claiming to provide new insights on gender relations (don’t they all). Some of my favorite conclusions: the fact that women don’t need men anymore is an ‘accidental’ side effect of their educational and economic progress (‘Oh, gosh darn it, honey, I seem to have made you useless — guess I have to become a lesbian now!’); because of this imbalance ‘women feel like they must compete for men’ (um, didn’t the The Rules cover that?); and (this is the best part) this new, educated, independent woman is difficult for men because of course men only do the romance part to get the sex — but the situation is downright tragic for women because it requires them to have more sex. Or something like that, couched in only slightly more scientific terms.
Sigh. Psychologists never admit that they’re creating a lot of these ‘facts’ from their own systems of thinking (wait, that’s ‘not getting outside the discourse’, right? Foucault? Anyone? Been a while.)
Come to think of it Anne Taintor, one of my favorite visual satirists, is doing a much better job getting outside the discourse -- someone give her a grant! (Image copyright Anne Taintor, obviously.)
As a discipline, the history of science basically exists to prove that objectivity doesn’t exist. No matter how objective you think you’re being, your own stupid socialization will inevitably affect your interpretation of facts. As has happened here. At least the commenters have pointed out the pretty obvious sexism of the researchers’ assumptions. But still.
I always had my students read an article on how ancient Greeks used science to ‘prove’ the correctness of the gender roles that already existed. The Greek arguments — namely that women were naturally suited for endless housework, child-rearing, and not making art or having lives — should sound familiar, because that’s exactly what evolutionary biology promotes today. It’s really just Aristotle in another package and FYI he also thought biology, like, totally justified slavery. Just sayin’….
I also happened to see No Strings Attached this week. (And yes, I see rom-coms, like them, and will even defend them on historical grounds — two thousand years and counting, baby! But that’s its own lecture…)
I have a little game I play when I see movies: I cover my eyes during the initial credits then try to guess whether the screenwriter was a man or a woman (I call this ‘gender practice’ as opposed to theory). In the case of No Strings Attached, I guessed woman and I was right.
One of the scenes that made me suspect female authorship. Overall: good soundtrack, excellent writing, great chemistry. I'd give it a B+/A-. Also, fantastic supporting cast of funny women.
Why? Because the women characters were absolutely looking for sex, and weren’t 100% on the whole marriage/domestic-inequality thing and (most tellingly) had a lot going on that wasn’t about men at all. Sure, there was some cheap psychologizing at the end, but you signed up for the pat ending when you paid for the ticket.
So yeah, we’ve come to a point when a rom-com has managed to do better at gender roles than a sociologist. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment…and to quote Credence, hope you’ve got your things together.
I had a mathematics advisor who used to rant for hours about how any of the social sciences — sociology, psychology, evo-pysch/bio, etc. etc. — are less scientific than history/classics because, “At least classicists admit that they need to adjust for data that are anecdotal, fragmented, and subjective.” It went one from there for about a half-hour about how the social sciences stole probability theory from mathematics and destroyed it, which I’ll spare you. But you might have enjoyed the rant.
Aw, you/your advisor just brought a tear to my eye — that’s all classicists want, a little recognition that they’re not fluffy thinkers! Yes, sounds like we would have gotten along swimmingly. But another case study in why branding works: by calling themselves social ‘sciences’, these fields have succeeded in being taken seriously by the world at large!
Wait, who takes political science seriously? No, really. Granted many of my kind suffer from physics envy, believing that if they copy economists in their use of equations and graphs of utility curves (statistics without data, anyone?) people will confuse what they do with science, but does anyone really think of “science” when someone says “political”?
I used to drive some of my grad school colleagues (and the odd professor) nuts by claiming that the only thing that kept me in the PS department was waking up every morning wondering if this was the day I’d learn anything I hadn’t already found in Aristotle.
The federal government, for one — I’m not sure how the dollar signs would stack up, but linguistics, psychology and sociology certainly get major buckage from the NSA; poly sci may not be getting it from the sciencey side, but when it comes to what’s ‘relevant’ anything claiming to be a science (even poly sci) gets preferential treatment in funding — at least if it’s modern politics. Not that money determines worth, of course, but it sure feels that way when you’re not getting funded and your social ‘science’ colleagues are, and it’s just such a convenient way for universities to rank worth, don’t you know…
So I’m gonna put you down as a no for our ‘Aristotle sucks’ party?
See, and this is why I like you. I tried to tell my professor last spring that Dehmel’s “Verklarte Nacht” was surprisingly similar to “the new J-Lo movie” (“The Back-up Plan”), and she refused to accept it. At first, at least. We won her over in the end.
Excellent — pop culture is the wave of the pedagogical future.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andrea Zellner, AK. AK said: When A Rom-Com Outdoes an Academic Study: http://wp.me/pUuAw-Jf [...]
Thank you. After years of laughing, I am now moving into hating most social sciences. They take things that are basically anecdotes (“I thought this person was pretty”) eliminate all context by assigning it a number (“0 or 1 for yes or no”, no way to deal with anything else that might be going on about how this person reminded them of their first girlfriend, etc), doing some math, and pretending they proved something, without regard to small or skewed samples. Drives me mad.
Current policy: I ignore all studies.
That’s my policy, and I had a similar journey: it was funny until I realized how seriously everybody else was taking this stuff. And yeah, I love how people’s self-assessment is used as ‘fact’ when it’s actually one of the least reliable indicators of anything — I mean, people lie about about being happy, for blog’s sake, so why on earth are they going to tell the truth about less anything else?
WoPro, you’re my pop culture meaning breakdown hero. I love this type of stuff. The simple truth is that those studies are jokes. You nailed the system precisely. I don’t just use pop culture to teach because I like too many movies (although I do). I use that stuff because no one cares what some academic blowhards think or say. Real humans absorb stories and find meaning within.
I agree with you, stories are going to make more of an impression on people, no matter how much they insist they’re creatures of fact. If only those jokes were taken less seriously, and deliberate jokes were taken more seriously, I think the world would be a better place!
Loved it! I wonder what else can outdo scholarly studies? Cereal boxes instead of child psychology studies? Dateline’s “What Would You Do?” instead of behavioral psychology?
Great post,
Kathy
Thanks…I don’t think it takes much to beat scholars, so few of them have any common sense left after grad school!
Hooray! Hooray! Stories do matter more than studies sometimes. A good story can tell you way more than an uber-funded “social sciences” study can.
The biggest mistake “English” professors ever made was not calling themselves “literary scientists.” Following your post, they likely would have made mucho dinero!
Ah, now, ‘literary scientist’ that’s a brilliant brand/blog — trademark that puppy and sell it to someone!
I dunno — For about a dozen years back in the… 70s/80s, in an effort to gain greater legitimacy, historians decided that they were social scientists, rather than humanists. What we got was “cliometrics” (seriously, that’s what they called it), and some of the most tendentious studies (“Time on the Cross,” anyone?) that were labeled scientific and therefore indisputable.
I’ll stay in the humanities, thanks.
… but some of my best friends are cliometricians… and the guys who wrote Time on the Cross are still really active! I always thought of cliometricians as poorly paid economists rather than as historians trying to get scientific-cred.
Hey, stop making me look things up, this is as bad as still being in the damned business. (Consults Wikapedia briefly.). Three observations:
a) of course slavery is efficient (say I, knowing only the ancient model thereof) — for the people who don’t have to do all that crappy labor that no one else wants to do. But so what? One question will not create a definitive answer, especially depending who you ask…I mean, so many of those great historical figures (cough, economists) had time to be brilliant because they were being supported by their own un(der)paid domestic labor (i.e. a wife). But when you let pesky considerations of moral justice screw up those efficiency equations, it just gets so darned complicated….
b) I had a lot of students who wanted to apply econ ‘rules’ to antiquity. I always enjoyed telling them that it was probably not such a great ideal to apply a culture-specific model from a thousand years into the future…like trying to explain our world by the rules of Flash Gordon or something. Though the Romans would kick the ass of any venture capitalist today, they invented usury — for real — and were far less apologetic about it than anyone today….
And c) several history departments remain in the ‘social science’ division of their university, whether they buy it or not!
Bob Fogel and Stan Engerman are two of the absolutely sweetest guys you’ll ever meet. Bob Fogel’s wife recently passed away, and there’s a long very romantic story about their relationship and the stresses society put on them for being a multi-racial couple. There are also quite a few Grand old Dames of Cliometrics without wives of their own (well, I suppose Deirdre McCloskey used to have a wife), possibly because economic history has been more accepting than other areas of economics. I’ve never met a group of more supportive and gender-, color-, trans-sexual-, some word for not caring if you’re at a top R1-, blind academics. Economic historians are, by in large, a very nice lot. I always thought it was because the historian part socialized them away from being standard economists, but with the hate evinced above towards them I’m kind of wondering about that.
I think that’s a really gross simplification of what economics does (applying a culture-specific model to the past). Half the stuff economic historians study is seeing whether what we consider to be truths today are really universal constants or just something bound by current modern rules. They’re testing the model, not the culture. The other half is looking at trends over time to see where we got to today and to make predictions about the future. History, from an economic historian perspective, is a tool to understand how reality really works and what it all means for today. (And I don’t see any problem with Peter Temin using economic models to study Roman times).
Excellent, gross simplification is exactly what I’m aiming for now that I’ve left. Glad to know it’s working.
Hey now…
I would say don’t slam too much on the social sciences, except that I know for a fact that many of the men in my field are perfectly scientific about most things but they put complete and total blinders on whenever something has to do with women. Case in point: Larry Summers. Case in point: recent paper that came out “proving” that menstruation decreases labor quality of women… when presented, women acted like standard economists and asked pointed questions: Did you rule out these other cyclical explanations of their absences? Are you sure this evidence from one company in Italy generalizes to other contexts? What’s your control group? etc. Men in the audience talking afterward accused them of being shrill, denying evidence etc. No– they were acting like economists who ALWAYS attack during talks… it was just the men in the audience who were closing their eyes.
The other half of our blog is in a different social science discipline and is very good about the stuff you’re talking about– she has a strong feminist theoretical background and it infects her work.
Hmm, gonna stand by my assertion that all the sciences, even the official ones, need a healthy reminder about their own human fallibility. And that goes double for econ — I mean, come on, this is the field that took two hundred years to admit humans don’t actually act rational most of the time?? Youthful ignorance, perhaps, but difficult to take such silliness seriously.
That said, I totally agree it’s infuriating to see the double standard of ‘rationality’ (which is, again, an argument for rationality itself being a mere construct) applied to the arguments from/by/about male and female scholars. And then there’s the fact that when anyone tries to make an argument about racial ‘biology’ it becomes a national emergency and case for outrage, but when it comes to women it’s totally fine and scientific. Yeah…
Discussing the social sciences as a whole obscures a wealth of differences within. Crack open a social science discipline like sociology, anthropology, and political science, and you’ll find some work that is profoundly influenced by the humanities and that make no claim to discover Truth through science. [AND you'll also find work like that already described here, trying to emulate the "real" sciences.]
I don’t know if, “Psychologists never admit that they’re creating a lot of these ‘facts’ from their own systems of thinking.” But I do know that this is a common way that social scientists critique each other.
The NSF grants don’t tend to go to those “unscientific” interpretivists or (gasp) postmodernists in social sciences–those who are “too” influenced by the humanities. But it is a bit rough to read humanities folks writing here don’t even know that such not-so-scientific social scientists exist!
I’ve seen social scientists critique each other, but it’s the self-awareness that’s most lacking, and most necessary. (Although that applies to most of humanity, to be frank.) Good to know the offensively broad statements are working…
Professor Krauss, (If I may call you professor, even though you never were my professor, and even though you torched the diploma, it feels strange to do otherwise,) At first your blog was an interesting discovery, but I find myself coming back often and agreeing with you more than I care to admit!
Anyway, this current scrawl of yours struck a chord. No less an authority than Feynmann supports your claim.
Technically I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be calling me Professor anything as I don’t hold a post. And even ‘Dr.’ is something I never liked much, so you can always just go with WoPro. And thanks(?) for coming back albeit unwillingly. My powers of persuasion must be growing.
Ah, Richard Feynman is very high up on the list of dead people I wish I could meet. And that accent — don’t hear that much in the Academy these days (nor did you when he was alive, really). Smart guy who could talk like a normal person, scientist who actually read literature and wrote well, academic who had genuine intellectual curiosity and enjoyed life. We sure need more of those. Though I really wish he hadn’t used that particular example; while it’s a valid question, it has been taken up by the pesticide/farming industry as a red herring to distract people from the real question of whether or not it’s a good idea to ingest carcinogens on a regular basis!
Really like this post.
I transferred out of a psychology degree pretty much because the things they were trying to make ‘scientific’ did not make sense when viewed through that lens – it just wasn’t the right framework for the material/topics being analysed.
Thanks, and thanks for reading. Rare but refreshing to find someone who didn’t buy into that psychology degree!
I stayed away from your site and came back a week later and… wow, what awesome posts. This one was particularly relevant to me because I quit studying psychology early on, but now I’m thinking about becoming a professional counselor, and was kind of wishing I hadn’t skimped on psychology classes. At the time, I had no idea that psychologist and social workers/counselors were so different and thought that PhD was the only way you could go with that degree. Anyway, this reminded me that I wasn’t crazy for thinking psych professors were often full of shit.
Beyond that… my favorite example of theories that get presented as “new” is “neuroplasticity.” I’m somewhat embarrassed that it took googling “neuroplasticity” and “controversy” for me to realize that the idea that the brain can change is nothing new. It’s so incredibly easy to convince an educated reader that an idea is new… it’s amazing how all you need to do is say “it’s new.” “New studies show that male and female hormones, contrary to popular belief, are differentiated.” Wow, I read that sentence back after writing it and was almost convinced it was important.
And on the subject of women/men being after “just sex,” I think that the biggest crime of these “facts” is how they give us material to manipulate each other with. I guess the best of us can consider these ideas and also consider that we’re just a bunch of people making decisions, but it’s incredibly easy to get bogged down on ideas about men and “just sex” and women and “settling.” I feel like a significant part of my generation grew up thinking that we were assholes if we weren’t interested in raising a woman’s children and, as a result, felt a bit betrayed and helpless when we realized that women were a lot more like ourselves than we thought, and we’d never learned how to approach them that way.
And finally, I just want to give you props for saying “gender practice.” I know exactly what you’re talking about and that’s an awesome word for it. I feel like I’ve been doing a bit of gender practice for a while. At some point last year, I decided to use strictly opposite-gender insults, like calling women jerks and douchebags and calling men sluts and cunts (but not bitches… that one’s become too common as a stand-in for f*got).