Sunday, August 12, 2012

QUARRELS & CONTROVERSIES

Studying criticisms of one school of thought by another in a discipline often provides the clearest statements of problems in a discipline. I gave the example previously of how the criticisms of frequentist statistics by Bayesians and vice versa – taken as a whole - provide the clearest account of what is wrong with both of these approaches and more importantly, inferential statistics in general in the social sciences. I also mentioned how the debate between mainstream and Austrian School economists, for example, provides a good viewpoint on the use of math in economics (which is even fuller if other heterodox views are also studied).
So the goal of this post is to point the way to clear discussions of some important debates. The post now is just a brief outline and placeholder. I will add to it as I run across various sources (sorry this page is quite messy still - slowly sorting it out/growing it). 

  •  Methodenstreit
  • Nomothetic - Idiographic debate
  • Reductionism
  • "Scientism"
  • Determinism
Controversy & Personal Debates (Some of these are in other fields, but have implications for the philosophy of the social sciences).
  •  Dawkins - Gould
  •  Dawkins - Wilson
  • Gould's mismeasures (Morton's Skulls)
  • The Hoxby-Rothstein debate 
  • Ron Martin - Paul Krugman, ("Economic Geography" or "Geographic Economics")
  •  Hartshorne-Schaefer debate
  •  The Tierney Affair
  • The McCloskey & Ziliak - Hoover & Siegler debate (significance testing in economics/social science)
  • Wilson - Lewontin/Gould/Rose (sociobiology)  
The Hoxby-Rothstein debate

Novel Way to Assess School Competition Stirs Academic Row: To Do So, Harvard Economist Counts Streams in Cities; A Princetonian Takes Issue (Wall Street Journal)


The McCloskey & Ziliak - Hoover & Siegler debate (significance testing in economics/social science)

The Cult of Statistical Significance. Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey Link

Sound and fury: McCloskey and significance testing in economics. Kevin D. Hoover and Mark V. Siegler Link

Signifying Nothing: Reply to Hoover and Siegler. Deirdre N. McCloskey and Stephen T. Ziliak Link 

 "Geographical Economics" 
Martin, Ron and Peter Sunley. 1996.Paul Krugman’s Geographical Economics and Its Implications for Regional Development Theory: A Critical Assessment. Economic Geography, 72: 259-292. Link

Martin, Ron.1999. The ‘New Economic Geography’: Challenge or Irrelevance? Transactions Institute of British Geographers 24:387-391. JSTOR


Sociobiology
Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate. Oxford UP, 2000. Ullica Segerstråle  Amazon "Look Inside" and Reviews
Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the Fittest. Kim Sterelny. Wikipedia summary 

 The Tierney Affair
Jungle Fever: Did two U.S. scientists start a genocidal epidemic in the Amazon, or was The New Yorker duped? By John Tooby|Posted Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2000. Slate.com Link

Gregor, T. A., & Gross, D. R. (2004). Guilt by association: the culture of accusation and the American Anthropological Association’s investigation of Darkness in El Dorado. AmericanAnthropologist, 106(4), 687–698. Link

Dreger, Alice. 2011. Darkness’s Descent on the American Anthropological Association: A Cautionary Tale. Human Nature, 22: 225–246. Link

Statement on the Publication of Alice Dreger’s Investigation, Darkness’s Descent on the American Anthropological Association: A Cautionary Tale. Jane B. Lancaster & Raymond Hames. Human Nature, 2011. Link
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Gould’s mismeasures

Gould's skulls: Is bias inevitable in science?

25 July 2011 by David DeGusta and Jason E. Lewis

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128225.900-goulds-skulls-is-bias-inevitable-in-science.html?full=true


Scientists Measure the Accuracy of a Racism Claim, Nicholas Wade, June 13, 2011


 Study Debunks Stephen Jay Gould's Claim of Racism on Morton
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/science/14skull.html

Lewis JE, DeGusta D, Meyer MR, Monge JM, Mann AE, et al. (2011) The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias. PLoS Biol 9(6): e1001071. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001071
Published: June 7, 2011


Like the "Post Autistic" movement in Economics  and at about the same time and for the same reasons there was the "Perestroika" movement in Political Science

 Cohn, Jonathan. 1999. “Irrational Exuberance: When Did Political Science Forget About Politics?” The New Republic, October 25, pp. 25-31. Link
“Perestroika” Lost: Why the Latest “Reform” Movement in Political Science. Should Fail. Stephen Bennett 2002. Link

Why Political Scientists Aren’t Public Intellectuals. 2002. PS: Political Science & Politics. Andrew Stark Link
Monroe, Kristen Renwick, ed. 2005. Perestroika! The Raucous Rebellion in Political Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.


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