Thread by @PerBylund

People's belief in data as a source of knowledge needs to be addressed. It is rarely more than faith backed up by scientism and fundamental misunderstandings of science/the scientific process. There are no data that can "speak" for themselves and data are rarely "objective."

The social sciences study a complex process emergent from actions based on actors' interpretations, understandings, and valuations. Much of the social world consists of unobservables, but even "objective" data that actors take into account are interpreted and thus subjective.

The natural sciences are generally much simpler than the social ditto because they study the world without human agency. This makes for a "cleaner" world that can (typically) be studied using experiments, tests of hypotheses, etc. and that produce largely reproducible results.

The correlations (potential causations) observed in the natural sciences are comparatively simple, but "data" are always collected and never complete; no sample is truly random, measures are not exact or without bias, effects cannot be determined without risk of confounding, etc.

Even if a sample is as random as can be, all known measures have been taken to avoid confounding, the instruments are as objective as can be, etc. they may still mislead us because, e.g., we collected the wrong data points the wrong way at the wrong time using the wrong means.

Data are never ever a guarantee of objectivity. The high-school version of science teaches a simplification that is deceiving because it causes a faith in data that is unfounded. It is not the data themselves that provide knowledge but their repeated tests and interpretations.

Science does not progress by collection of data that are then used to test a hypothesis. Even if the study is peer reviewed and the methods used vetted by others with deep statistical and field expertise. Empirical science progresses through repetitions with reproducible results.

Data do not generate knowledge. Repeated (and independent) collections of data (that thereby vary) done at different times in different places, and perhaps with different assumptions, intended to test similar hypotheses are expected to home in on the true nature of reality.

Such repeated experiments, perhaps done thousands of times with reproducible results, are still based on assumptions (such as the existence of constants and/or constant relationships), which are not themselves beyond reproach. They may seem obvious at present, but time will tell.

It's unfortunate that people have a puerile view of data as objectively informing us about reality; it creates an overreliance (faith) in singular findings (that might be completely wrong) and an unfounded skepticism of findings generated using other methods than the scientific.

I find much of the knee-jerk rejections of praxeology (but not, strangely, of its methodological siblings math, logic, geometry) based in this type of faith in objective data. These critics pretend to be skeptical, but really only voice a pseudo-religious belief--scientism.

Whereas scientists specialized in their field of study can productively adopt and apply an already existing method of study, in reality no methodology is better than the philosophical argument for it--and philosophy ultimately hinges on what is reasonable, not proven truth.

For most people, a productive first step toward developing a critical mindset is not to dismiss or reject any type of scholarship or even scientific results, but to realize that data are not the objective arbiters of truth that you learned in high school. They simply are not.