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Jennie--I think yours is a key point--bad science is all over the place and the goal should be to be rigorous and to better educate about what it means to do science, whether social or otherwise, "hard" or "soft."

On Jun 24, 2012, at 5:52 PM, Jennie Dusheck <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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> 
> There is an awful lot of bathwater, but that doesn't mean there's no baby. I don't know about political science, but I've read ingenious studies in both psychology and sociology.
> 
> Still, I have to say that the problems of weak or even shockingly bad experimental design are hardly limited to the social sciences. I've seen published medical reports of 5-10 patients with no controls and only the sketchiest observations. If scientists (whether social or otherwise) don't take experimental design (or even observation) seriously--and I think a lot don't--it behooves science translators to be skeptical, filter out the most dubious results, and keep a sharp eye out for babies floating in the oceans of bathwater. There is so much good science from the past that has already stood the test of time and which the public doesn't know about.
> 
> Jennie Dusheck
> Science Writing & Editing
> Santa Cruz, CA
> [log in to unmask]
> 
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