You know, for the Space Book, we've been researching everything from rocket design to statecraft, and everything in between. The most no-fun topic has been, surprisingly space psychology. I have read so much and know so little because all the answers are so fuzzy.
Like, space medicine still has lots of questions but the nature of the problems is really clear and delimited. With psych it's just a sea of anecdotes and small sample size papers. Add to this that the subjects in the papers are often actively deceiving the experimenter.
Group psychology was the hardest of all. I've read textbooks on this topic and it's still not clear to me that we know anything. Which is fine, but then you have to figure out what you want to say for a chapter on the topic!
It's like an endless string of case studies and theories, but there's no ability to say "if p then q." The most interesting thing is that, as a general matter, all the good stuff is obvious. Don't treaty your troops like meat, and don't select jerks.
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