I would add that when you actually started to read and listen to what actual sociologists say and do ... it was nothing like what random math graduate mussing on HN thinks it is. The popular approach here of cherry picking two small studies and running wild with them was not all that much a thing.

Instead there was way more care about making conclusions, a lot of nuance and conditional statements (this study says so under those conditions and another one opposes sort of thing). But, what certain people here actually hate the most are results that are fairly consistent and were reproduced to death.

> While I also consider most of sociology and its ilk to be unscientific, and the rest to be only tenuously scientific,

They are not any less scientific than, say, physics just because they have a harder time observing and modeling things.

> not any less scientific

In theory, no. In practice, yes. One doesn't even need to make a subtle case about all the ways it's gone wrong. Just say "Reproducibility Crisis".

Yes, as practiced, as well as in principle, sociology is less scientific than physics.

Some systems- human social behavior being one of them- are simply not amenable to modern science because the systems have far too many uncontrolled variables, and the ability to create hypotheses which can't be falsified (because running the experiments would be impossible, unethical, or ambiguous) is far larger.

Science is a methodology. Science is applied equally in both disciplines. That one field has more uncontrolled variables does not make it less scientific.

I have not seen evidence that the methodology of science is applied routinely in sociological research.

And you have, first hand, in every other field?

Yes, they are. A lot of sociology and its surrounding fields is just talk. Idle speculation. The rather small empirical part is riddled with methodological errors. There are now people trying to build more detailed, computational models, but that is a slow process, and the more realistic the model, the more often it will be wrong.

It can be both. If they believe there is some harmful effect on this particular pseudo science about grievance politics that's driving social contagion and self harm, then they believe it should be removed, at least from places like libraries.

You'll see the same thing with race science. I reject it not because I'm well versed on how it's not rigorous enough, although it may be, but I think it's on its face because incredibly harmful.