History Main / HardOnSoftScience

** There's also the fact that history requires absolutely rigorous fact checking to be even remotely credible. Just like harder sciences.
** The confusion here is in part due to sheer ignorance: there's several different branches, ranging from "[=WTF=] happened!?" to "[=WTF=] were they ''thinking''!?" The latter can actually be a quite hard field, if enough writings from the period survive, while the former can be rather soft due unreliable accounts; such cases it can actually be ''easier'' to figure out what they were thinking than what actually ''happened'' in the first place.

** He didn't think that psychology ''in principle'' was total hogwash, he just realized that it was a fairly young discipline at the time, and thus most of the theories were probably crap. He even admitted that if you have a problem, you should go see the "witch doctor", since even though their knowledge is still incomplete and possibly way off track, they're the most likely people to be able to help you if it's possible.

***** This behavior was actually the subject of a TakeThat in an episode where Booth and Bones head to a mental hospital where Bones makes pointed [TakeThat remarks] to the head psychologist there. Eventually after a while of this the psychologist finally gets sick of this and points out that while her expertise in the dead is all well and dandy, he's using his training to help 'living people' who desperately need it, soft science or not.

* Discussed and subverted in {{Michael Crichton}}'s Sphere. One of the JerkAss physicists asks what somebody from such a useless field as psychology is doing on the mission. The psychologist protagonist points out (perhaps only to himself, it's been a while) what terrible people skills the average physicist has. It turns out the psychologist is [[spoiler: the only one mentally stable enough to handle the nigh-omnipotence the titular sphere gives without killing everyone.]]

* The psychologist in ''[[PhilipKDick Martian Time-Slip]]'' uses outdated terms like "[[AllPsychologyIsFreudian anal-retentive]]" to categorize people's personalities.
** Considering [[TheSixties the date]] it was written in it was more likely a refection of [[ScienceMarchesOn public views at the time]] than a TakeThat.

* Among other tunes TomLehrer performed in [[http://www.archive.org/details/lehrer the 1997 performance on archive.org]] is "Sociology". The TakeThat flies both ways, though - he was satirizing both, something that flies above the heads of Youtube commentators.

* Averted in some of Isaac Asimov's Golden Age short stories, set in a galactic federation of humanoids where psychology is a fully-developed science pure and applied, and psychologists are, in consequence, a revered elite listened to carefully by government authorities. And, of course, there's the Foundation Trilogy.

* Among other tunes TomLehrer performed in [[http://www.archive.org/details/lehrer the 1997 performance on archive.org]] is "Sociology".

*** As is neurobiology, which is the field that [[SheIsNotMyGirlfriend Amy Farrah Fowler]] studies, which Sheldon is condescending toward her about, leading to [[spoiler: their 'breakup' and Sheldon's purchasing 25 cats]]. Most of the evidence suggests that Sheldon just thinks all other scientists and their work are innately inferior to him and his work.

** In the episode where Sheldon has to give a speech, one of his opening jokes is at the expense of a geologist, which he (drunkenly) follows with 'I joke with the geologists, but it's only because I have no respect for their field.'

** When Leonard's mother explains to Sheldon her and her husband's study on the use of their sex life solely for reproduction, she stated that she went at it from a neurological standpoint while her husband used an anthropological standpoint, but that her's was the only one worth reading. To this, Sheldon says 'of course'.

** When Leonard's mother explains to Sheldon her and her husband's study on the use of their sex life solely for reproduction, she stated that she went at it from a neorological standpoint while her husband used an anthropological standpoint, but that her's was the only one worth reading. To this, Sheldon says 'of course'.

** He also agrees with Leonard's mother when she describes the study she and her husband did of using their sex life solely for reproduction, but that as a neurologist her's was the only one worth reading.

* ''{{xkcd}}'', [[http://xkcd.com/451/ here]], as well as [[http://xkcd.com/435/ here]].