Scientific American is not a peer reviewed scientific journal. In the past I've run across a few articles from Scientific American that misrepresented established scientific consensus on a few different topics. I did not study this topic so I have no opinion on "Loss Aversion"

We can doubt everything the so-called social sciences have been teaching us.

We can doubt everything all sciences teach us.

We can doubt anything we choose.

Science gives us evidence, ideas and plausible explanations. It gives us electric cars and smart phones. It also gave us lobotomies and spontaneous generation. Sometimes science is wrong.

The best thing about science is it points out it's own faults. Both Psychology and Social Science are dealing with issues of repeatable results, so yeah many things they tell us should be doubted and studied further.

This is more an issue with how funding for studies is acquired and less about the value of the field. Sadly science often gets funded by corporations with vested interests, political endowments or religious organizations. This is something we should focus more on.

I think "loss aversion" is a fallacy. A simple understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics will support that notion.

But to generalize to the point that all of "social science" is wrong would be the fallacy of over generalization IMHO.

Authors are seldom right to that extent.

As a poker player, and in game theory/economics in general, I don’t have any doubts about loss aversion being real. I’ve observed it in myself and others first hand. It’s perhaps something that, by being aware of it, one can train themselves out of. Once you learn about it in the context of poker for example, you realize you can never consider yourself “pot commited” if the odds aren’t with your hand and you learn to know better when to fold ‘em. Throwing good money after bad isn’t gonna bring any of those former bad bets back, and just because it keeps you in the hand doesn’t improve your odds of winning. Yet people still play “on tilt” and commonly keep doing it.

So perhaps an increasing societal awareness of the phenomenon is making us generally less susceptible to it, but I highly doubt it’s fallacious in every way. I mean it is a fallacy in that it’s an illogical thought process for us to act on, but I believe people still do just that, and stopping that fallacious behavior is the point of making oneself aware of it. I’ll try to remember to check out the whole article when I get off work and see what they’re basing this claim on, but I’m highly skeptical that it doesn’t impact most of us and our decision making.

From the article:

“In sum, our critical review of loss aversion highlights that, even in contemporary times, wrong ideas can persist for a long time despite contrary evidence, and therefore, that there is a need to critically assess accepted beliefs and to be wary of institutional consensus in science and otherwise.”

Maybe we should doubt science in general, not just the social sciences. A lot of what is presented in the name of science is nothing but politics.

I've an MS in clinical psychology. Got it in the late 70s while still on active duty as a form of acceptable "therapy" for what now is labeled PTSD.
I'm confident that most if not all the "soft" sciences are merely conjecture, as repeatable results of experimental situations never seem to occur. The stuff is not without merit and usefulness. But calling it "science" seems a stretch.