While most of this discussion is purely semantic, "Science" as a label,
there is, I think, at least one area where the 'misuse' of the label is a
problem. It is not, IMO, a problem with math as science or computer science
or even library science. It is, rather, with the term Social Sciences.
Let's just concentrate on psychology as one intellectual area that often is
called a 'social science' and then let's include educational research under
the broader heading of psychology. The problem, as I see it, is with the
Public's conception of the validity of scientific work, and that problem has
two edges. The first is to read too much validity into the results of
psychological research because it is 'scientific'. As we know, and as
_most_ people in the field know, there is great difficulty in controlling
enough variables in most psychological work to place too much weight on any
given experiment. To be sure, sometimes these researchers get carried away
with their statistical analyses and seem to claim more than they have really
proven. The second problem is when such work clearly does not produce
reliable results (in the public's mind) and then erodes their confidence in
the 'harder' sciences. I think the physical sciences are suffering a lack
of confidence based on this kind of association. It also doesn't help when
our engineering colleagues can't tell a meter from a foot and the medical
research field has too many non-scientists doing pseudo-scientific research.
Of course we occasionally shoot ourselves in the foot as well.
Rick
*********************************************
Richard W. Tarara
Associate Professor of Physics
Department of Chemistry & Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
219-284-4664
rtarara@saintmarys.edu