Your message raises several interesting issues.
During my BSc and MSC in mathematical statistics (at Waterloo and LSE, resp.), we would not have been directed towards Social Statistics texts: when we asked Dave Brillinger at LSE for “an example” in MV analysis, he showed us the maths for the 3-dimensional
case!
When I began teaching at Enfield / Middlesex on the BA Social Science (intake 150 pa), we were team teaching ‘Methods and Models’
with philosophers of science (many from LSE-Popper/Lakatos or Sussex), so we cringed a little when HMB desctibed statistical inference as ‘inductive statistics’. During the 70s and 80s, we used Blalock, Bibby (Living Statistics), Statistics Workbook by (the
late) Mike Fuller (also of this parish), and Statistics: Concepts and Controversies by David Moore. In the 70s of course there was much criticism of ‘scientism’ (e.g. in the Willers’ book, Systematic Empiricism) or what we focussed on at Enfield, ‘crude empiricism’.
(We conterposed what I might call ‘a muscular yet flexible hypotehtico-deductivism’ under the motto, if one were needed, of ‘Not empiricism – but empirical methods.’}
Demystifying Social Statistics (1979) had a section on critiques of empiricism and ‘positivism’; its final chapter went into the political issues and movements of the time, as did the final chapter of
Statistics in Society (1999).
The debates went on: in particular, Cathie Marsh had a robust rebuttal of the facile linking of surveys and ‘positivism’ in
The Survey Method (1982). … The idea of ‘inductive methods’ had a revival as a ‘philosophical justification’ (in my view, unnecessary) for qualitative methods in the social sciences, and as a contribution to the presentation of neat tables contrasting
‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ methods by authors of social reasearch methods texts.
Coming to the present, inductive methods have again come to the fore, though largely unacknowledged as such, in current enthusiasms
for Big Data; these have been discussed on this list. They are promoted by a new kind of ‘data sceintist’, who do not have to worry about issues concerning statisticans – namely, validity of measurement, correlation vs. causation and sampling / inference –
or so they think.
These issues are taken up in the first section of
Data in Society, for which RadStats, members and troika, have provided admirable and much appreciated support. The M/S was forwarded to Policy Press, in late August. We three editors (JE, Sally Ruane and Humphrey Southall) are cautiously optimstic that,
following an external review, we will be able to announce the publication for next summer. More anon on this list.
Best,
Jeff
*******
Dr. Jeff Evans
Emeritus Professor
Faculty of Science & Technology
Middlesex University
London NW4 4BT, UK
Website:
http://www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/staff-directory/evans-jeff
Middlesex University Research Repository:
http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/view/creators/Evans=3AJeff=3A=3A.html
*******
From: email list for Radical Statistics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of BYRNE, DAVE S.
Sent: 17 September 2018 18:18
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: a question about methods
I am currently writing an encylopedia entry on Hubert Blalock. I got into statistics through his excellent textbook as an undergraduate. Reading over his work has made me think
about the issues posed by the predominance of multi-variate methods, mostly linear methods, in the quantitative programmes of Sociology and Political Science. Of course such methods dominate in Econometrics which is defined by them. Radstats seldom discusses
methods as opposed to engaging with data as descriptions. Anybody any views on this. Blalock, who was plainly a decent man, got on the wrong side of some US radicals not about the real politics - for example he was a fierce defender of civil rights and the
implications for Universities - but rather because his kind of approach was seen as some combination of elitist and scientistic. I am trying to locate a pamphlet from the Red Feather institute on Gramscii and Blalock but that is hard to find! Rather than
personalize to one man I wonder what people in general think about the methods issues in relation to social scientific understanding and any sort of radical programme.
David Byrne
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