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Originally Posted by Willravel
I appreciate that, but I'd like to see the follow up investigations into these complaints before I assume that they are symptomatic of anything but phantom problems.
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And I'd point out that if you are making ANY kind of assumptions without detailed knowledge of the specifics of the case, then you are not being very scientific. (light-hearted jab)
Ok, several other things that have come to mind:
with regard to the hard vs soft nature of certain branches of science: perhaps a better terminology would be accuracy and/or precision. the "hard" sciences have, over hundreds or even thousands of years, developed a vary high level of precision. the "soft" sciences, because they are still in their infancy, so to speak, do not yet have that same level of precision.
examples: engineering, particularly civil and mechanical, has been studied and practiced for literally thousands of years. social/behavioral sciences, like psychology and psychiatry, have been studied and practiced for maybe a hundred fifty years or so. even medical science has only been studied in a scientific manner for a few hundred years.
as a result of this huge age difference in these various disciplines, there is, naturally, a huge difference in the level of precision that has been attained therein. as was pointed out earlier, there are few, if any, unknown variables in the construction of a building. on the other hand, treating depression (or any other psychiatric/psychologic illnesses) is still somewhat of a guessing game (albeit an educated guess) due to the fact that there are so many unknowns when it come to the mind and brain. this is not a criticism of psychology and the social sciences, but rather a simple statement of (and I hope you'll pardon the use of the term) fact.
of course, there are some who might say that the social sciences will never reach the same level of precision, due to the inherent unpredictability of the human species. the question here is: do we simply not know enough about ourselves to predict human behavior to the same level of precision that we can in predicting how a building will stand up to wind/rain/earthquakes/etc, or are humans simply and inherently unpredictable? I tend to think that there is a certain level of unpredictability to humanity that no science will ever be able overcome.