Sloppy Data Floods or Precise Social Science Methodologies? Dilemmas in the Transition to Data-Intensive Research in Sociology and Economics

What are the implications of data-intensive research for social sciences? In an influential editorial, Chris Anderson from the magazine Wired predicted a future where scientific advances would result less from theoretical work, and more from brute force mining on petabytes of data. While evolutionary biology and astronomy are cited as two examples of fields which already entered this new age, it is very uncertain whether the social sciences should feel concerned at all by this prediction. This chapter chooses to examine the situation in two disciplines in particular - sociology and economics - to evaluate to what extent Anderson's claim applies to the social sciences. How is the emergence of new data sources perceived in these fields? Have different types of "big data" had different impacts? (transactional data for sociology, brain imaging data in economics). Is the diagnostic on the desirability of these changes unanimous among sociologists and economists? Comparing the debates and actual paths of research taken in these two cases, we observe that the coming of data intensive research does creates new trajectories renewing existing research practices, but with much more complexity than the sweeping change predicted. This lesson learned for social sciences suggests that a closer look at particular fields from natural sciences could possibly uncover similar, important nuances about the revolution supposedly brought by "big data" science.

[1]  A. Denis.  Editorial: Pluralism in Economics Education , 2009 .

[2]  E. Wilson,et al.  Sociobiology: The New Synthesis , 1975 .

[3]  J. Beaulieu.  The space inside the skull : digital representations, brain mapping and cognitive neuroscience in the decade of the brain , 2000 .

[4]  Richard A. Peterson,et al.  The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. , 1971 .

[5]  Jonathan D. Cohen,et al.  The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-Making in the Ultimatum Game , 2003, Science.

[6]  D. R. White,et al.  Structural cohesion and embeddedness: A hierarchical concept of social groups , 2003 .

[7]  M. Couper.  A REVIEW OF ISSUES AND APPROACHES , 2000 .

[8]  Gordon Bell,et al.  Beyond the Data Deluge , 2009, Science.

[9]  Charles Anderson,et al.  The end of theory: The data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete , 2008 .

[10]  Nikolas Rose,et al.  Spatial Phenomenotechnics: Making Space with Charles Booth and Patrick Geddes , 2004 .

[11]  Max Travers,et al.  The Decomposition of Sociology , 1997 .

[12]  Dorothy Ross.  The Origins of American Social Science , 1990 .

[13]  P. Glimcher,et al.  Activity in Posterior Parietal Cortex Is Correlated with the Relative Subjective Desirability of Action , 2004, Neuron.

[14]  Jack Hirshleifer,et al.  The Expanding Domain of Economics , 1985 .

[15]  P. Samuelson,et al.  Foundations of Economic Analysis. , 1948 .

[16]  T. Leonard,et al.  Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era , 2005 .

[17]  A. Coulon.  L’École de Chicago , 1993, Que sais-je ?.

[18]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Introduction: A Brief History of Neuroeconomics , 2009 .

[19]  M. Burawoy.  Public Sociologies: Contradictions, Dilemmas, and Possibilities , 2004 .

[20]  G. Esping-Andersen.  Two societies, one sociology, and no theory , 2000 .

[21]  J. Turner,et al.  The Impossible Science: An Institutional Analysis of American Sociology , 1990 .

[22]  A. Gouldner.  The Future Of Intellectuals And The Rise Of The New Class , 1980 .

[23]  Andrew Caplin,et al.  Dopamine, Reward Prediction Error, and Economics , 2008 .

[24]  Craig J. Mundie.  The way forward , 2009, The Fourth Paradigm.

[25]  S. Aronowitz.  Comments on Michael Burawoy's “The Critical Turn to Public Sociology” , 2005 .

[26]  G. Elliott Wimmer,et al.  Neural Antecedents of the Endowment Effect , 2008, Neuron.

[27]  Faruk Gul,et al.  The Case for Mindless Economics , 2005 .

[28]  Laurent Cordonnier,et al.  How Did Economists Get It So Wrong , 2011 .

[29]  Michael L. Platt,et al.  Neural correlates of decision variables in parietal cortex , 1999, Nature.

[30]  J. N. Kaufmann.  Structural Analysis in Contemporary Social Thought . A comparison of the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser, par Miriam Glucksmann. London/Boston, Routledge and Kegan Paul (International Library of Sociology), 1974, 197 pages. , 1976 .

[31]  Mike Savage,et al.  Contemporary Sociology and the Challenge of Descriptive Assemblage , 2009 .

[32]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Neuroeconomics: Why Economics Needs Brains , 2004 .

[33]  Auguste Comte.  Discours sur l'ensemble du Positivisme , 2009 .

[34]  E. Wilson.  Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge , 1998 .

[35]  Warren M. Hern.  In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought , 1992 .

[36]  Ralph Schroeder,et al.  Social Science Approaches to e-Science: Framing an Agenda , 2007, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[37]  A. Gouldner.  Against Fragmentation: The Origins of Marxism and the Sociology of Intellectuals , 1985 .

[38]  A. Alchian.  Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory , 1950, Journal of Political Economy.

[39]  Roger Burrows,et al.  Some Further Reflections on the Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology , 2009 .

[40]  Matthias Schonlau,et al.  Advantages and Disadvantages of Internet Research Surveys: Evidence from the Literature , 2002 .

[41]  D. Zeitlyn,et al.  The Internet and the future of social science research , 2008 .

[42]  Joan Acker.  Comments on Burawoy on Public Sociology , 2005 .

[43]  M. Bulmer.  Sociological research methods: An introduction , 1977 .

[44]  N. Rose,et al.  Do the social sciences create phenomena?: the example of public opinion research. , 1999, The British journal of sociology.

[45]  R. Hollands,et al.  Rethinking ‘Current Crisis’ Arguments: Gouldner and the Legacy of Critical Sociology , 2009 .

[46]  Raymond M. Lee,et al.  Online Research Methods and Social Theory , 2013 .

[47]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Using Neural Measures of Economic Value to Solve the Public Goods Free-Rider Problem , 2009, Science.

[48]  Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi.  Can Burawoy Make Everybody Happy? Comments on Public Sociology , 2005 .

[49]  Laurent Mucchielli,et al.  Les règles de la méthode sociologique , 2010 .

[50]  Patricia Ticineto Clough,et al.  The New Empiricism: Affect and Sociological Method , 2009 .

[51]  Walter F. Willcox,et al.  Contributions to the History of Statistics. , 1933 .

[52]  Roger Burrows,et al.  The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology , 2007, Sociology.

[53]  Jelke Bethlehem,et al.  The rise of survey sampling , 2009 .

[54]  S. Danielsson.  The propensity score and estimation in nonrandom surveys-an overview , 2002 .

[55]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Functional Imaging of Neural Responses to Expectancy and Experience of Monetary Gains and Losses tasks with monetary payoffs , 2001 .

[56]  M. Zald.  Sociology as a discipline: Quasi-science and quasi-humanities , 1991 .

[57]  Christine Hine.  Computerization Movements and Scientific Disciplines: The Reflexive Potential of New Technologies , 2006 .

[58]  George J. Stigler,et al.  The Organization of Industry , 1969 .

[59]  A. Diekmann.  Empirische Sozialforschung: Grundlagen, Methoden, Anwendungen , 2007 .

[60]  J. Urry.  Beyond the Science of ‘Society’ , 2005 .

[61]  M. Friedman,et al.  Essays in Positive Economics , 1954 .

[62]  L. Brunt.  The advent of the sample survey in the social sciences , 2001 .

[63]  Florian Znaniecki,et al.  The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. , 1960 .

[64]  Vasja Vehovar,et al.  WEB SURVEYS " CAN THE WEIGHTING SOLVE THE PROBLEM ? , 2002 .

[65]  Christopher Chute,et al.  The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe , 2011 .

[66]  P. Atteslander.  Methoden Der Empirischen Sozialforschung , 1999 .