How do we kill sociology? Or just fix its incredibly broken

What's so broken about it?

>>7756562
Replicability and Politics

>>7756559
The way to fix it is to get them to study the way the world works as opposed to the way they want the world to be.

Economics and power drives all human relationships, social norms develop only because the power that be endorse them and they are powerful because they have a monopoly on military power and knowledge. The powers that be endorse them because those social norms serve their power in some way.

Society is ruled and controlled by money, "money talks", everyone without exception is a self serving dis-ingenious prostitute that serves the powers that be by serving themselves through that phenom we call the dollar. People want to matter because their stupid brains equate that with a better survival and reproduction rate.

If you were special you wouldn't want to be special.

>>7756559
It is already destroying itself. Sociology is committing suicide by promoting anti-academic sentiment.

>>7756568
Not a single day in any sociology class and I'm already better educated on human relations than ever will be.

>>7756566
>Replicability and Politics
Yeah but give examples.

>>7756573
Where does it do this?

>>7756568
But I should say, as should anyone in a similar position as me, that I know next to nothing about the curriculum of social sciences taught at colleges around the world.

My opinion is based solely on the dumb opinions I hear form so called "experts" about social issues on the news and on the internet.

Spoonfeed me whats wrong with sociology.
No one has posted any example of it being shit other than it being shit.

>>7756584

Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716

An MTV video that uses a "sociological" definition of racism to push a racial political agenda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eTWZ80z9EE

>>7756559
I don't think we can at this point to be honest. The current retarded hugbox faculty have entrenched themselves in virtually every institution.

We should cut off funding to all sociology departments for 10 years and rebuild it all from scratch.

>>7756585
If you're just pretending to be ignorant, fuck off. If you're genuinely ignorant, ask /pol/. They have all the information.

>>7756573
The problem with academically inbred disciplines is that they can keep getting grants because they keep citing each others' worthless papers and increasing their own ratings.

You'd have to convince both the social charities and the government to stop funding them, the latter should be easy (Sweden has already done this to several departments for example), but the former is almost impossible.

>>7756642
Nowadays they don't even need to cite papers anymore. They just cry about their feelings and make up some boogeymen. In most western countries this is the #1 way to influence politics and society.

>>7756597
A typical example would be that recent controversial study essentially the author (a grad-student) claimed that people were more willing to vote for gay rights after speaking to a homosexual in person. The guy made up thousands of data points using a deterministic RNG algorithm, but in truth he didn't perform a single test. The paper was easily published and he quickly acquired fame on plenty of political talk shows where he discussed his "results". No one tried to reproduce it, because it's sociology and nobody cares, so it quickly became fact.

Another student in the field thought the data was suspect and then with the help of his engineering faculty they proved beyond doubt how he falsified his data, the student's adviser then confronted him and after looking into the grant money trail lo and behold it turns out to all be bullshit though the student kept denying it. The student was kicked out, but not before earning a shitton of money from his fame. The polemic was posted on /sci/ at some point, but I can't find it.

For every paper like this that is caught, there are thousands more that are probably bullshit because there is so little oversight in the field.


It's not even the data faking that's the worst thing, it's how the field is rotten to its core. Very few people in the discipline is interested in real research to find objective data on society anymore, they are more interested in "studies" that push their political beliefs. If you talk to the minority of intelligent students in the field, they'll tell you how bad it is.

It is in desperate need of Diax's rake. And nuclear fire.

>>7756562
>>7756584
>>7756585
Look at modern universities with 'social justice' being heralded by a very vocal portion of the student body. Things like 'white privilege', 'cultural appropriation', and 'safe spaces' are slowly eroding intellectual tenets like free debate and expression of ideas. They're promoting campus-wide bans on speech and debate of other viewpoints because of 'hurt feelings' and fostering 'safe learning environments' - it's something that's fiercely anti-intellectual and is backed by social science.

Let's use an actual example in real life where this happened -- Yale, last month. Two professors resigned because of threats and abuse from a large part of the student body because one of them sent out an email in October saying that the school shouldn't ban certain kinds of halloween costumes - that college was a place for freedom to express what you'd like, to hear and see differing viewpoints and talk with others about issues. She encouraged kids to discuss with other students or just move away if a costume hurt their feelings. It was a really reasonable and well thought out email - you can find it online.

Both she and her husband (the other professor) received threats and constant harassment from yale students. One group gathered around one of them in campus while a student screamed at the top of her lungs at him about this. About halloween costumes and free speech. When a large group of STEM professors at Yale signed a pledge supporting these two people's email and said it was, in fact, reasonable, they were denounced too. Newspapers published sudden questions like 'Are STEM professors out of touch with reality?' (I'm not even joking. http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/12/04/students-question-stem-profs-awareness-of-campus-issues/ ). That's why it's a toxic community. This is what it does-- these people didn't just form up out of the ground with this shit. They were taught.

>>7756706
The fact they're surprised STEM faculty can still think objectively instead of subscribing to flavour of the month group think is pretty shocking.

Didn't they learn about the Nazis in their classes?

>>7756706
Continuing. There's also the matter of racism. By the strict definition of a sociologist, racism cannot be done by anyone other than a white male in our society. Black people, Asian people, Hispanic people - none of those people can technically be labelled as racist for attacking or treating someone differently if they're white.

This is because sociologists decided to 'properly define' racism from the popular or legal definitions.

"the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races." - This is the most widely accepted and 'correct' definition. It's used in dictionaries. It's the first thing google shows you when you type in 'define racism'.

The sociological definition isn't very different. It just adds "...by someone in a position of power over them". When it's combined with the belief that white people hold some ethereal grasp of power over all other races in modern society (no other factors matter in this. Whites and straight males are always assumed to have some manner of privilege because of 'systemic racism') it means that you can't be racist or sexist against a white straight male. They're always the aggressors. It is - from a sociological standpoint - impossible to discriminate against a white/straight man, because even if you do something to them, they've still 'got white privilege'.

Sociology is ridiculous and cancerous.

It's the stupid fucking universalist platitudes that are entrenching upon self-reflection on a more relative scale. Sociology is formatted into a dialog of pop culture, centering itself on aspirations of egalitarianism by default. It strives to create an unnecessary and unjustified complex of terms and opinions of what is more or less a self-masturbatory conceptualizing of all the world's problems in part to another's ignorance on what "identity", or "class" 'truly' is.

The rhetoric of sociology plays onto the willingness of people feel wronged in subordination or exclusion based on individual detail. Keeping in mind that this is not new, or even egregious in nature. All the time being, this field of study is elicited and substantiated by media reports instead of personal experience which is most often presumptuous, if not noted implicitly.

>>7756597
They are literally /pol/ when it comes to scientific rigor and integrity.

>>7756706
Literally the only reason a person would say that it's okay to wear racist costumes is to stir shit. In this case it blew up in her face and she had no one to blame but herself.

>>7756737
Racial science is social science, retard.

The rest of academia moved onto population genetics years ago because race isn't real except as a social construct (hence sociology).

>>7756773
>Literally the only reason a person would say that it's okay to wear racist costumes is to stir shit.

https://www.thefire.org/email-from-erika-christakis-dressing-yourselves-email-to-silliman-college-yale-students-on-halloween-costumes/
Read the goddamn letter, it's the exact opposite of stirring shit.

>Racial science is social science, retard.
The definitions of a word put forth by sociologists is relevant to a sociology thread, idiot.

>>7756767
That's really bad. I support equal rights and all that, but some of the things I've read in this thread are retarded.

Do sociologists actually solve/give directions on problems or do they just say "here's my study on racist/sexist stuff, gib funding pls"?

>>7757898
Most of them are involved in marketing and advertising. Probably.

>>7756642
Pure math has this problem.

>>7756559
Kill all sociologists. Or better yet, humans.

>>7758211
*unsheaths fedora*

>>7758211
Edgy Anon, very edgy indeed.

>>7758193
What's pure math?

>>7756559
Human beings are social creatures driven emotions and desires. These desires to reach a stage of satisfaction from dissatisfaction has caused the advancement of civilization. People are motivated and driven by their basic needs. That is what sociology and psychology are there to explain, though most of the theories proposed are just pseudo science.

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>>7756773
>race isn't real except as a social construct.

HOL UP
WE WUZ KANGS

>>7759931
evaluate my theory.
>>7756568

it basically states that everyone is a whore for money.

>>7756559
Continue the trend of economics imperialism. Sure, economics itself isn't exactly a hard science, but it's better than what sociology is now.

>>7756588
There was an intro sociology class that took place immediately prior to one of my classes last semester so I overheard some of what was going on, shit was practically designed to fuck with /pol/.

>my professor walks in during the time between classes while the previous one is there
>she talks to him about the documentary she was showing about how capitalism is evil

>>7756603
>sociological definition of racism

What confuses me is that you don't even need to make a new definition to communicate the same idea. Using the classic definition of only prejudice, it's still clear that one form is overwhelmingly more common in given situations. Just say something like "this form of racism was heavily prevalent under Jim Crow."

>>7756559
Sociology needs to be killed.
It's dogmatic philosophy disguised as science.

>>7756597
They're literally creating Newspeak. They don't care about honesty in their work they only look for something that fits their world view.

The worst that I can think of is how they don't want people to come and talk on campuses. If you should be able to talk anywhere it should be a college campus.

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>>7756706
>http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/12/04/students-question-stem-profs-awareness-of-campus-issues/
>“Maybe we should require faculty to take an ethnic studies class too?”

I never got this, have these people never just bullshit their way through a class they didn't care about? I bullshit my way through pretty much all my assigned reading in middle and high school, for instance, I'm pretty sure mandating a class wouldn't change anyone's mind, since only those already inclined to take it will really try and everyone else will bullshit their way through.

On a broader note, the "STEM nerds are ignorant and need perspective" thing really picked up this past year, with plenty of the aforementioned thing about mandating classes. I get 2015 was kinda fucked up, but that particular drive perplexes me.

>>7756559
>How do we kill
What do you mean by "we", Peasant?

>>7761191
STEM people are more prone to accepting logic as a basis of reasoning rather than emotion, and the largest points of contention in universities and colleges in 2015 were based on a foundation of prioritizing feelings over logic (i.e. "we should ban certain speech because it makes someone uncomfortable"/"we should set up safe spaces where certain races can't go to make people feel comfortable"). That creates contention.

Most school newspapers and publications are on a pro liberal (in the modern US sense) side, meaning they'll publish in favor of it. Hence why this happens. They don't actually want teachers to take those classes, they're using it to sound reasonable and 'informed' while simultaneously discrediting STEM teachers in other parts of the article ('are they out of touch with reality?'). It puts them up on a pedestal. That's really the only point of the article.

I am studying sociology in germany and I honestly haven't encountered anything people talk about here. There is no social justice warriors, there were just a few hamplanets in first semester and they all dropped out cause they didn't manage the first 2 semesters that almost only consisted of statistics and research methods. Haven't heard anything really stupid from any prof either, sure some theories are total bullshit but they are all presented in a neutral way, with pro and contra arguments and none of them ever tried to force a certain viewpoint into someones throat.

For example i'll take the huge discussion between qualitative and quantitative methods. My profs for quantitatives never talked shit about the other ones, even though it was obvious they thought qualitative methods are bullshit and vice versa. They only taught as what we needed to know, engaged in discussion if needed but never took a personal opinion into it.

If you're just talking about the falsification problem, you should take a look at all the other discilpines as well. It happens a lot more in psychology, than it does in sociology. I agree that it's a serious problem but it's not a problem that only sociology has. If you want to read an article on this subject google
"How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta Analysis of Survey Data by Daniele Fanelli"

>>7756568
Seems like you haven't read many theories. You should take a look at Parson, Luhman or even Goffman. Your "theory" fails to explain pretty much anything. If you want to put economics into the center of your world view, fine, but it's nowhere near the best explanation for a lot of social phenomenons. If you only take them into account, how are you explaining the developement of a political power? Just saying we endorse them is a pretty lame explanation. I'd say even Hobbes Leviathan, that is heavily flawed as well, would be a better one.

>>7756737
Yeah if you just look at one assholes theory and disregard everything else it sure seems like bullshit. Fact is that the development of society and social norms is something that can't be explained and proved that simply, and I am not sure if we will ever get a real explanation on this. Because of that said theories may look like philosophical horse shit from time to time, but there are a lot of good and practical helpfull theories out there.

Just have a look at the theory of social desorganization (or broken windows theory). It's a theory that can be falsified or proven and it proved pretty damn helpfull for society.

Sociology isn't just people who all believe in the social justice warrior stuff and shit.

>>7756706
This is more of an american problem. Whenever I hear about this stuff it either happened in the USA or sweden.