Re: Women's Ways of Knowing Study (Applied to physics

[jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu (James Mclean)]

Leigh Palmer says:
> > 	I thought the authors made a good case until the end of the book
> > but hurt their credibility by their political attacks.
>
> You have yielded to a human weakness. The political leanings of the authors
> should have no logical bearing on your acceptance of their previous
> arguments *per se*.

You seem to imply that a line of reasoning in the social sciences has the
same objective clarity as a logical or mathematical proof.

In the research for this book, the authors clearly had to make many
interviews and then distill generalizations from them.  It appears (based
on the messages so far posted) that this was not done in the manner of
statistical testing; rather, the authors are suggesting a framework within
which to interpret their observations.

IF (and I have no idea if this is true) the authors harbor sociopolitical
biases and are unable to set those biases aside in writing the book, then
it is reasonable to suspect that they were not able to set those biases
aside when making their observations.

In brief, in the social sciences, political leanings may influence the
data, and hence may be relevant in evaluating an argument based on that
data.

-- 
--James McLean
jmclean@chem.ucsd.edu
post doc
UC San Diego, Chemistry