>>495330Only the most axiomatic of systems are provable.
What distinguishes Science, from social science, is that natural science or real science, seeks to take observations by reducing the known variables to a minimum, while also reducing bias. You then repeat something thousands of time, and your ideas are scrutinised to the point that it becomes accepted within the community and all counter arguments have failed. At that point its pretty conclusive within our contemporary knowledge and technological basis. We have a uniformity of mind a consensus.
When it comes to social science, none of this is done, sure you try and decrease bias, but you can never reach the levels ascertained by the likes of natural science.
The easiest criticism of social science is the survey. Now even if we ignore the causation/ correlation dilemma, the survey itself is not reliable in any sense.
All of the people are asked for their own view, they are asked of their own experiences. The human mind is hella unreliable, and people tend to answer in line with their current bias and moral code. People do not know what causes X or Y, but they will rationalise their own mind to give X or Y as the cause.
If you want a proper study, you'd take an environment and observe people in that environment, with as many controlled factors as possible. You'd need a control, and you'd have a group with X, a group without X, a group with X for a short period upon which its removed. You'd need to repeat this many times over. You'd also need an accurate system of measurement beyond self assessment. May brain scanning or something.
Even then data may not be conclusive as people may react differently depending on their own view point which causes them to take stigma in a different way. For some it may make them "stronger", others may ball and cry.
If we just take your argument as fact about stigma, it should apply to other stigmas.
Yet smoking reduced when it was stigmatised.
