I appreciated your discussion of paradigms as a heuristic for signaling legitimacy and rigor. However, I think that even the heuristic game is starting to run into friction in STEM - particularly physics. I came across an interesting youtube video about a paper recently published in Nature. It involves a science influencer, so caveat emptor, but I found the idea of a “bubble" in particle physics research to be an interesting concept, and gave me a bit of smug satisfaction as a social science research that always feels a bit of the “are you a real scientist” pressure in the back of my head. https://youtu.be/shFUDPqVmTg
Oh, Sabine... I tend to take her with several grains of salt. Maybe that's a me problem, but her inclination toward the conspiratorial is pretty off-putting.
Perhaps the difference in STEM land is that even though paradigmatic simplicity is misleading and no longer universal, it remains an option. Engaging with that discourse is not avoidable in the social sciences, but plenty of STEM realms can choose not to have the conversation.
I think you are on to something with the "paradigm" vs "big theory" discussion. If there is a paradigm behind the paradigm, is it really a paradigm? FWIW, this is also a major issue in management in the private sector. Lots of fuzziness (and lazy thinking, IMHO) on the topic which leads to uncertainty in leadership and communication. Thanks for sharing your thinking!
I appreciated your discussion of paradigms as a heuristic for signaling legitimacy and rigor. However, I think that even the heuristic game is starting to run into friction in STEM - particularly physics. I came across an interesting youtube video about a paper recently published in Nature. It involves a science influencer, so caveat emptor, but I found the idea of a “bubble" in particle physics research to be an interesting concept, and gave me a bit of smug satisfaction as a social science research that always feels a bit of the “are you a real scientist” pressure in the back of my head. https://youtu.be/shFUDPqVmTg
Oh, Sabine... I tend to take her with several grains of salt. Maybe that's a me problem, but her inclination toward the conspiratorial is pretty off-putting.
Perhaps the difference in STEM land is that even though paradigmatic simplicity is misleading and no longer universal, it remains an option. Engaging with that discourse is not avoidable in the social sciences, but plenty of STEM realms can choose not to have the conversation.
I think you are on to something with the "paradigm" vs "big theory" discussion. If there is a paradigm behind the paradigm, is it really a paradigm? FWIW, this is also a major issue in management in the private sector. Lots of fuzziness (and lazy thinking, IMHO) on the topic which leads to uncertainty in leadership and communication. Thanks for sharing your thinking!