I agree; good science is good science regardless of the field. However, as someone who has studied the impact of morality on education statistically, it is the devil's work (pun intended) to sort out good definitions of courage, integrity, honesty, fortitude, etc., as proper constructs of morality, and then model them both experimentally and statistically. It has taken decades to just get where we are, but without consistent definitions of basic constructs we are still decades away from substantive conclusions, IMO.

As I said above, one does not try to argue against the fallacy of invincible ignorance (look it up on Wikipedia), against those whose beliefs are set in stone,

Exactly what am I invincibly ignorant about, and what evidence have you provided that I am simply ignoring?

My main points of contention are that:

1) Social scientists can do legitimate science. They don't always do it, but it can be done.

2) There are questions that seem to be outside the realm of science, but can perhaps be brought into the realm of science with ingenious experiment.

3) Religious belief can be quantified.

but to save my time, and for the benefit of those who might read these comments here are arguments against scientism presented better and at greater length than I can

I am not a believer in scientism. There are truths that are outside of science. That there are infinitely many primes cannot be scientifically demonstrated. I don't need to read an article to know that.

I don't understand how you get to label various soft sciences as unequivocally unscientific, and then when I push back I become a believer in scientism steeped in invincible ignorance.

By the way, your argument ad blusterum (without facts or logic to back it up) that Briggs' criticism of the statistics is baseless, shows the weakness of your position.

Except Briggs doesn't actually criticize the statistics beyond mentioning that the sample size is to small. He also does not substantially criticize the method of the study, or why the statistical methods chosen should have been different. If you see such criticism, please enlighten me. I have read the article several times and read the study and I do not see anything in Briggs' article besides straw men, snark, condescension, and a willingness to take the authors of the study out of context.

Regardless, if it turned out that this study made a serious error and was invalid, it would in no way disprove that social sciences can actually do legitimate science.

As I said above, one does not try to argue against the fallacy of invincible ignorance (look it up on Wikipedia), against those whose beliefs are set in stone, but to save my time, and for the benefit of those who might read these comments here are arguments against scientism presented better and at greater length than I can

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/scientism-and-the-integrity-of-the-humanities

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/charged-grandeur-god

and Google "Scientism Refuted" for shorter pieces.

By the way, your argument ad blusterum (without facts or logic to back it up) that Briggs' criticism of the statistics is baseless, shows the weakness of your position.
I will pray for you Ignatius.

Ignatius, I'm just going to reply to one of your counter-arguments because I don't think you're capable of breaking the bounds of whatever prejudice against God you have.

But I would assume that an all-powerful God would be able to break these supposed bounds of prejudice. You really don't know anything about me, but thank you for confirming "my prejudice" that Christians have no difficulty in judging others without adequate information.

Consider someone who live in the wilderness, 100 miles from a Church but is a deep believer, attends once a month, or someone in a country where a traveling priest visits once a month (this is the case in many Latin American and African countries) but yet is a deep believer; compare that to a spouse who attends church daily because of spousal pressure but has no deep beliefs; one can multiply such examples.

Straw man. I would not design a study without first trying to eliminate confounding variables. Obviously I would not compare data from the first world with data from the third world and draw conclusions.

compare that to a spouse who attends church daily because of spousal pressure but has no deep beliefs; one can multiply such examples.

That is why we have control groups.

And as for self-reporting...again, that's the sort of data sociologists like to believe,

Evidence for this assertion? Crime data vs poverty is a trivial counter-example.

like the paper on which Briggs commented, they are houses built on sand

Actually, neither you nor Briggs has produced a substantive criticism of the paper. Briggs complained about news reporting, and showed that he actually does not have a good understanding of statistics.

And your other arguments can be countered in a similar fashion

So poorly with unsubstantiated assertions?

Ignatius, I'm just going to reply to one of your counter-arguments because I don't think you're capable of breaking the bounds of whatever prejudice against God you have.
Here is an easy argument to counter your social-science proposition that religious belief can be quantified by frequency of church attendance, etc.
Consider someone who live in the wilderness, 100 miles from a Church but is a deep believer, attends once a month, or someone in a country where a traveling priest visits once a month (this is the case in many Latin American and African countries) but yet is a deep believer; compare that to a spouse who attends church daily because of spousal pressure but has no deep beliefs; one can multiply such examples.
And as for self-reporting...again, that's the sort of data sociologists like to believe, but, like the paper on which Briggs commented, they are houses built on sand.
There is more truth to anecdotal reporting from good psychiatrists, such as Oliver Sacks, than all the pseudo-quantitative fakery that sociologists and such indulge in.
And your other arguments can be countered in a similar fashion but I have better things to do.

"I can quantify religious belief by frequency of church attendance, frequency of prayer, self-reporting, or by beliefs."

Really?

Do you disagree? Perhaps you could give some evidence as to why you don't think I can approximate religious belief using those metrics.

And can you quantify God in the same manner?

It would be hard to quantify something that doesn't exist. However, I believe it was Aquinas who notes that we can partially understand God by understanding his creation. In this creation, we see an immense amount of suffering, misery, chaos, and ugliness. Is this what God is like?

I'll agree that many academics in the non-hard sciences do more consequential work than some academic physicists...so what does that go to prove?

It disproves your assertion:

I follow Fr. Stanley Jaki's dictum that science is that which can be quantified and measured to see if theoretical predictions can be true or falsified. This was not done in the paper reviewed by Briggs and is not done generally by "social scientists".

Social sciences do scientific research. Yes, there is bad social science, but that does not make it any different from any other human endeavor.

But please cite statistics or other evidence to show the proportion of social scientists who do work more significant than is done by physicists.

This was not my claim. I only claimed that some social scientists do research that is more consequential than some physicists. Just as I claimed that some social scientists do legitimate social science.

than do the flood of suckers of the public teat, climatologists who fake data and statistics to promote AGW, but so what.

I take it you mean anthropic global warming? Can you give an example of faked data? As I understand, the data collected at Berkeley was collected by skeptics. This issues is not a priority for me (i.e. it is not a primary voting concern), but I would be interested if you would expound on your claim.

And with respect to your statement that "Science explains everything" ...are you serious or just trying to be sarcastic?

I did not say that. To restate, I said that there are things outside of science, but sometimes things that were once thought to be outside of science can be brought into the scientific realm by an ingenious experiment.

Please see "How the laws of physics lie" by Nancy Cartwright or "The Scientific Image" by Bas van Fraassen, or other references cited in "Tipping the Sacred Cow of Science..."http://rationalcatholic.blogsp...
or not

I have quite a stack of books to read. However, I will take these under advisement.

who are the scientists you're talking about? they can't be the authors of the article, who are not scientists.

"I can quantify religious belief by frequency of church attendance, frequency of prayer, self-reporting, or by beliefs."

Really? And can you quantify God in the same manner?

"Many academic social scientists do more consequential research than academic physicists"

Please cite two comparisons.

It is not, in the space of a brief comment, possible to fully outline the underpinnings of my philosophy of science. And if I have given the impression that I think science is superior to all other disciplines, I apologize. That is not so. I get irritated when other disciplines try to cloak themselves with a prestigious quantitative cloak that is not merited or, as in the paper critiqued by Briggs, fallaciously applied. Indeed, there are, as many philosophers of science have pointed out, serious limitations in how science works and what science can tell us.

Now with respect to your state position advocating scientism:

"Personally, studying physics helped lead me on the path of abandoning my Catholic faith, and not for the usual reasons. (Aka God is no longer necessary, because science explains everything.)"

If you do believe the science explains everything, your horizon is severely limited. See any of the references cited in "Tipping the Sacred Cow of Science: Confessions of a Science Agnostic"

http://rationalcatholic.blogspot.com/2014/06/confessions-of-science-agnostic.html

or not.

Ignatius, I think you have a different notion of what science is all about than I, as a physicist, practicing for 50 some years (published, reviewed, panelist, grad students) have.

Is this an argument from authority? I will take you as an authority on whatever subfield of physics you do research in, but not on this.

I follow Fr. Stanley Jaki's dictum that science is that which can be quantified and measured to see if theoretical predictions can be true or falsified.

I am not a fan of Jaki, but I do not see how that definition precludes social sciences. I would add repeatability.

This was not done in the paper reviewed by Briggs and is not done generally by "social scientists".

So, if we have one paper that fails to live up to the standards of science, all of social science is no longer science. That does not follow. Briggs failed to mention a single statistical mistake that the paper makes, while making statistical mistakes of his own. Certainly BF Skinner's experiments on conditioning or Asch's conformity experiments are scientific. The effects can be measured and the experiments are repeatable.

Religion can not be subjected to quantitative tests, nor can ethics, esthetics, love, and a vast domain outside of science

I can quantify religious belief by frequency of church attendance, frequency of prayer, self-reporting, or by beliefs.

We cannot quantify ethics, but we can try to quantify moral choices and the reasons for moral choices. Crime data vs poverty is an example.

I could possibly quantify aesthetic reactions by a brain mapping. Same with love.

Are there things outside of science? Yes, but social science is not one of them. We can try to find a scientific answer to almost any question, but in many situations it is difficult to plan a proper experiment that gathers good data and eliminates as many confounding variables as possible.

And I'll add two more things to educate you (I hope) about science

Why is it that theists are always claiming they can "educate" atheists on matters that the atheists may know a good deal about? Is it easier to do this than actually demonstrate something? You have not shown that social science is outside Jaki's definition of science; a definition that is not universally accepted. I have provided social science experiments that are quantifiable, repeatable, and predictive. Why is that not science?

Personally, studying physics helped lead me on the path of abandoning my Catholic faith, and not for the usual reasons. (Aka God is no longer necessary, because science explains everything.)

The same Lord Kelvin who said in 1900: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." It appears Kelvin missed a confounding variable of his own - all the experiments done in physics thus far were with objects moving slow and sufficiently massive.

Many academic social scientists do more consequential research than academic physicists.

Ignatius, I think you have a different notion of what science is all about than I, as a physicist, practicing for 50 some years (published, reviewed, panelist, grad students) have. I follow Fr. Stanley Jaki's dictum that science is that which can be quantified and measured to see if theoretical predictions can be true or falsified. This was not done in the paper reviewed by Briggs and is not done generally by "social scientists". Religion can not be subjected to quantitative tests, nor can ethics, esthetics, love, and a vast domain outside of science.

And I'll add two more things to educate you (I hope) about science:

Lord Kelvin:

In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize Winner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viaDa43WiLc