I know it's a cartoon,(one dissing sociology) but I doubt very seriously that Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Karl Marx, and others adjusted their reality to fit their hypotheses. I can't see Durkheim taking statistics about suicide and changing those facts because maybe he didn't like the idea that men commit suicide more often than women. It is just as difficult to study a group as an individual. Maybe one-day psychology and sociology will be melded together to get a more accurate picture of the individual in relation to the society he/she is part of. An analogy: Genes react to their environment because genes are an expression of their environment. So we must study genes and the environment to understand how both interact with each other.

FYI: "Although sociology has its roots in the works of philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Confucius, it is a relatively new academic discipline. It emerged in the early nineteenth century in response to the challenges of modernity. Increasing mobility and technological advances resulted in the increasing exposure of people to cultures and societies different from their own. The impact of this exposure was varied, but for some people it included the breakdown of traditional norms and customs and warranted a revised understanding of how the world works." (History of Sociology)

Let's use this forum to keep learning, too.

I think it totally misrepresents "social science"

Seems to me to be more of a statement about the failings of the study of social science than a statement about today's society. It also seems to be somewhat misogynistic.

I agree, people today seem to be so set in their opinions that they won't give in to actual hard facts no matter how obviously they are presented to them.

Depiocts accurately what the Trump machine is doing to our culture.

Sounds accurate to me. And if you can’t change reality, you can always label it ‘Fake News.’

Many years ago, I did a summer semester at the Weizman Institute. One day we were all sitting around drinking our 3% beer and we decided to rank the sciences. What we came up with was something like this: Math, Physics, Chemistry, Stamp Collecting, Phrenology, Tasseomancy, and after a long stretch we came to sociology. Last on the list was Economics and we decided to keep it off the list as not being related to science in any observable way.