Blog/2026-05-02/Why Is Social Science Usually Wrong?
Everyone has experienced this. There are studies and papers on why doing a thing X will yield less of another thing Y. Then, in reality, the opposite gets done and works. So what's the deal? Supposedly BART's problems weren't that they were letting in unpleasant people. "The research shows" that the primary concern for most passengers is frequency. Okay, that sounds convincing. Thank you, The Research.
But then, BART instead focuses on these massive fare gates and maintenance costs plummet and ridership rises to post-pandemic records. This shouldn't have happened. What was supposed to have happened is that the resulting barriers to entry make it hard for BART to keep passengers and a doom spiral should have ruined everything. The Research Shows that you need to reduce fares, perhaps even set them to zero, in order for the public service to be viable.
Ah, but a counterpoint. If the gates are working, why are 16th St / Mission and 24th St / Mission not recovering as fast as the rest of the system? Checkmate, non-humanities major! Checkmate. In fact, if you look at Mission Local's coverage of the area you will see the various 'street vendors' and 'bicycle repairmen' selling wares they have obtained through entirely legal means through the five finger wholesaler.
It's like social scientists inhabit a world entirely different from that which the rest of us inhabit. Their world is ruled by a mysterious being called The Research. He Shows them various truths about that world, which they carry with them to ours to spread. Unfortunately, the world of The Research shares very little in common with ours and seems to have a lot in common with the kind of wishful thinking that a well-meaning but ultimately misguided social science undergraduate might wish the world were like.
You have probably also encountered a situation where social scientists describe to you through the powers of multivariate hyperdimensional ultracalculus why a sophisticated and nuanced statistical relationship exists between factor A and outcome B. If you see that your world doesn't seem to have this effect, remember that you were not chosen by The Research to be Shown the Truths.
