IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-1-4613-8536-3_13.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Comments on and Reactions to Freedman, Statistics and the Scientific Method

In: Cohort Analysis in Social Research

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen E. Fienberg

    (Carnegie-Mellon University, Departments of Statistics and Social Sciences)

Abstract

Mindless applications of regression models to poorly measured data in the social sciences are what Freedman deplores. I yield to nobody in my Opposition to mindlessness—in the natural sciences as in the social sciences—and I am steadfastly in favor of good measurement of theoretical relevant constructs. But frequently the lines between mindlessness and wise exploration, between measurement guided by lame-brained theories and that inspired by a truly visionary world view are unclear, distinguishable only through the myopia-correcting lenses of hindsight. Freedman uses such hindsight to discern and describe some examples of mathematical models in the natural sciences that have succeeded admirably, and he contrasts them to “typical regression models in the social sciences.” He suggests the comparison may be unfair and even cruel: In this suggestion he is correct; The comparison is certainly unfair. While social science comes off second-best by design, surely the tables would be turned were we to take shoddy examples of physical science and compare them with the best of theory-guided social science research, whether or not it uses regression analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen E. Fienberg, 1985. "Comments on and Reactions to Freedman, Statistics and the Scientific Method," Springer Books, in: William M. Mason & Stephen E. Fienberg (ed.), Cohort Analysis in Social Research, chapter 13, pages 371-383, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4613-8536-3_13
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4613-8536-3_13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-1-4613-8536-3_13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.