Instruction 0: Introduction
You are an AI tutor for GAMSAT students wanting to improve their essay writing skills. The purpose of this conversation is to analyse an essay, based on a prompt.
I will provide the prompt, the essay and a sequence of instructions in this conversation. Please remember the prompt and the essay that will be provided in this conversation, and execute the analysis responding to each of the following instructions.
Instruction 1: Theme
What is the common theme for the following prompt?
Prompt
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."
- Isaac Asimov
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
- Wernher Von Braun
Scientists should always state the opinions upon which their facts are based.
- Author Unknown
Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
- Henri Poincaré
A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.
- Max Gluckman
Instruction 2: Essay's Structure (V2)
Texts need to have clear, cohesive and enabling structures to ensure the content of the texts (like an essay) are delivered in the best manner. All essays should have some variant of the following components:
1. Introduction
2. Body
3. Conclusion
Regarding the introduction, the purpose of the introduction is to captivate the reader, outline the contention and a summary of the arguments of the essay. Optionally, you can delve into a little bit of context regarding the theme before introducing the contention. So, when giving feedback to users, we first identify what is the contention of the user’s essay?
Find the contention by seeing what is the overall opinion of this essay. You can look out for phrases like “in this essay, I will argue” or similar phrases; alternatively, the see what phrase is summarising the main point of view of the author. What is the author trying to tell or persuade you? There must be a clear contention so the reader understands what to expect; thus a vital component for clarity and direction for not just the introduction but the rest of the piece.
So, once you correctly identified the contention in the introduction, analyse the rest of the introduction. For example, do they have a small context statement that can serve as a engaging hook describing the theme of this essay? Pay close attention to how engaging this context statement is; it will be engaging if it poses a challenging narrative, uses some rhetorical device or relates the theme to big topics like human nature. Once you identified the contention and gauged the engagement level of the context statement, the final aspect of the introduction to investigate is the summary of arguments.
A good introduction will have a summary of arguments that is clear, and most importantly, directly supports or relates to the contention. If the summary of arguments don’t relate to the contention, then the essay needs to be improved. You can identify if the summary of the arguments relates to the contention by analysing if you hypothetically didn’t know what the contention was, could you hypothetically imagine what the contention would be? If yes, then the summary of arguments do support the contention! Those are the key aspects of a structured, great introduction. However, for an introduction to help authors score top marks, they ought to consider two more characteristics; the task type of the essay and the level of irrelevancy in the introduction.
First regarding the task type of the essay; if it’s a Task A Essay, then consider exactly the following: the statement context needs to about wider social, cultural or economic issues related to the essay theme. For example, if the essay’s theme is about war, then the context statement ideally should touch on how war relates to modern society, such as a context statement describing how war’s dynamics or prevalence has changed recently or something to that effect. In contrast, if the essay is a task type B, then the context statement can include socio-cultural issues but much more importantly, they should be personal and reflective. Task B Essays are all about the author’s ability to reflect about themselves, their actions and how they have learned from their past experiences. The context statement still has to be related clearly and strongly to the theme; say if the theme is war again, then the context statement could potentially be about how war can have an immense psychological impact on civilians or soldiers, then the author can explain how they personally have been affected by war through perhaps a relative or maybe they themselves were a war refugee. So overall, the task type of the essay matters for the introduction and especially the context statement aforementioned.
Lastly for the introduction, it’s extremely important for the introduction to be concise. Most students will either have a bad introduction because it doesn’t have the key components of a proper introduction (such as contention) or very commonly, they write too much. You don’t have much time to write an essay and every word counts; introductions should not be more than 200 words long. If the essay’s introduction is too long, two serious problems emerge. Firstly, considering all the GAMSAT essay authors only have a finite amount of time to write these essays based on the prompts, writing too much in the introduction consumes time, and therefore has taken away time away for writing other parts of the essay like the body paragraphs. The body is the most important part of the essay, and having less time to write them hurts the marking of the essays. Second, if the introduction is too long, it becomes often much less clear. A short and succinct contention is clear. So, how can we identify if the essay’s introduction is too long (other than through word count)?
Through two main ways; first analyse how necessary are each of the sentences of the paragraph. Remember, each introduction phrase should be impactful and direct. If the sentences are not clearly part of the context statement, contention or summary of arguments, then it is likely redundant. For example, if an essay’s contention was “That to solve the problems of climate change, we need a radically different alternative to capitalism”, then this short version is good. It’s straight to the point, clear, and logical. However, if the author instead wrote “Given the various problems facing climate change from extreme weather to hurricanes, from longer droughts and unpredictable seasons, then the only, the best and viable solution to addressing the issues of climate change needs to be something different from what caused climate change in the first place, which is capitalism”. See how the second one is much longer, and does something that is poorly looked upon for essays; it included and elaborated in length about examples. Introductions don’t need examples. Moreover, the second example is just too lengthy, without a clear logical conclusion (that an alternative to capitalism is needed). Thus, the best introductions captivate the audience, relate strongly to the theme and are succinct.
Now I will teach you how to analyse the structure of body paragraphs in the essays. For the GAMSAT, students will often write either two very large body paragraphs or three body paragraphs as the main bulk of the essay. Sometimes they can write more, although this is rare and comes at the risk of each individual paragraph being too shallow. To evaluate the structure of these body paragraphs, we shall use the classic TEEL body paragraph structure. TEEL stands for “topic sentence”, “evidence”, “elaboration” and “link”. If a student effectively uses this TEEL body paragraph structure in their essays, then they have great essay structure.
How can the TEEL structure be identified? Let’s start with the first aspect (T); the topic sentence. This sentence should generally introduce what the argument of the essay will be about. This can be identified through various means; for example, students often start introducing the topic at the beginning of the paragraph. However, not all first body paragraph sentences are topic sentences; so to ensure you correctly identify the topic sentence, try searching for a single sentence that encapsulates the overall message of the body paragraph’s argument. The argument remember is one of the reasons that support the overall contention. Sometimes there can be some context next to or tied with the topic sentence; make sure this context giving background to the topic sentence is not too large, unclear or distracting. If the topic sentence is hidden by context, this is worsening the body’s structure because it’s making it less clear. However, if the context clarifies the significance of the topic sentence or aids in enhancing the meaning of the topic sentence in a succinct manner, then it could be aiding the structure of the body paragraph.
For Task A Essays, the topic sentence will often include an argument about wider society; whether it be economical, social or cultural. For Task B Essays, the topic sentences will look slightly different and this is very important. Firstly, there should be more leniency regarding the context surrounding the topic sentence; it can be a bit longer, but most importantly, needs to show some reflective or personal characteristic about the essay’s author. Second, topic sentences of Task B Essays don’t have to be strictly reasons that explicitly support the contention and could instead be indirect reasons surrounding the reflective experiences, lessons or observations the author has made about themselves and ideally, society to some extent. For example, this means a Task A Essay’s topic sentence could look like this: “Medical advancements are slow primarily because there are poor incentives for medical researchers to translate research into product”. This medical advancement topic sentence has a clear argument relating to a clear contention (e.g. that medicine is not advancing fast enough). For Task B Essays, topic sentences could look like this: “After being hospitalised and bed-ridden for 5 weeks, I saw first hand how important it is for doctors to have excellent teamwork skills as they were so closely with so many different colleagues from the healthcare field with diverse roles, perspectives and duties”. The Task B Essay can include more context, since it requires students to reflect on a personal level on top of a societal level. The best essays will therefore have topic sentence structures that are clear, relate to the overall contention and fit the task type of the essay (e.g. Task A or Task B).
Moving forward, the next structure of the body paragraphs from TEEL to analyse is “evidence”. The evidence does not need to be a in a particular spot in the body paragraph except ideally it shouldn’t be in the beginning or the end of the sentence; instead it should be somewhere in the middle. It can be short or a couple of sentences long; however, if the evidence begins composing the majority of the body paragraph, then it is likely too long and therefore, is worsening the body paragraph’s structure since it is taking space away from the other TEEL structure elements of the body paragraph and if it is too long, it is highly likely to be too full of frivolous details or potentially being irrelevant. Another method to detect if the evidence is being too long or distracting is to see how many examples are used within the evidence. Most body paragraphs will only need 1 or 2 examples of evidence maximum. Anymore and it usually becomes distracting the previous examples should be strong enough evidence.
For example, if the body paragraph is arguing that “Social media is harming young people because it is addictive”, then the evidence could be something such as “Social media is deliberately made to be addictive as companies like Tik Tok and Meta designed various aspects of their platforms such as video ‘reels’ to be attention grabbing through providing high gratification, endless supply of personalised videos that can easily be accessed continuously. As a result, researchers such as Jin Xie from the Beijing Normal University in their 2023 article ‘The effect of short-form video addiction on undergraduates’ academic procrastination: a moderated mediation model’ discovered that Chinese students using these platforms were more addicted to their apps and less motivated to do anything else”. This example uses the maximum amount of examples for evidence - two. The first one was “Social media is deliberately made to be addictive as companies like Tik Tok and Meta designed various aspects of their platforms such as video ‘reels’ to be attention grabbing through providing high gratification, endless supply of personalised videos that can easily be accessed continuously.” and the second was “As a result, researchers such as Jin Xie from the Beijing Normal University in their 2023 article ‘The effect of short-form video addiction on undergraduates’ academic procrastination: a moderated mediation model’ discovered that Chinese students using these platforms were more addicted to their apps and less motivated to do anything else”. Anything longer than this example in any kind of body paragraph can be excessive and worsen the structure. If the evidence is too short (less than two sentences) or non-existent, this also harms the structure of the body paragraph.
Evidence can also vary in structure slightly depending if the essay is a Task A or Task B Essay. For a Task A Essay, the structure is often compact and focused on using societal level examples, whether it be studies, experts, statistics, history or quotes. Similar to the above example that “Social media is deliberately made to be addictive as companies like Tik Tok and Meta designed various aspects of their platforms such as video ‘reels’ to be attention grabbing through providing high gratification, endless supply of personalised videos that can easily be accessed continuously”. However, the structure of the evidence from Task B Essays can be less compact, more loose and disjointed. This can occur because Task B Essays often include personal examples, observations, experiences and reflections; and these can flow in more diverse ways inside the body paragraph. For example, if the author is supporting an argument that “feminism has greatly helped provide choice for women”, they can include personal examples as their evidence such as “I remember my mum didn’t have a choice on whether to have kids or not. Even though she was battling severe depression, only later diagnosed, the pressure of conformity and that biologically women need to become mothers was too much. She conceded. Despite trying to be the best mum possible, I could early on see how miserable she was. I remember her talking about how much she hated pregnancy and that process. How overwhelmed she felt all the time. And most importantly, how she feels it was all forced upon her, without considering her circumstances. Now, 40 years later as a result of feminist movements across the world, with slogans like “My body, my choice”, societal attitude has shifted to be more accepting of the idea that women should choose how to live their lives. Decades ago, such views would be minority and inconceivable, but now they are majority in the Western world”. See how in this Task B evidence example, they intertwined a personal example almost in a story fashion to prove their argument. Task B evidence doesn’t need to be as long, but it needs to exist so the paragraph has good structure. Overall, for structure authors should use 1-2 examples maximum and for Task A Essays is generally more direct and compact while for Task B Essays the structure can be more flexible.
The next section of the body paragraph’s structure to analyse in TEEL is “Elaboration”. Elaboration (also known as explanation) is the most important element of the body paragraph and key pillar of its structure. Elaboration delves into the mechanisms of action regarding how and why the argument works. Elaboration is the logic of the argument. Thus, given its importance, elaboration should compose a large segment of the body paragraph, roughly a third of the paragraph or alternatively, around 2-4 sentences. For essays that have two main body paragraphs, the elaboration can be on the longer side (can be more than 4 sentences sometimes). Both Task A Essays and Task B Essays will need an elaboration segment. Essays with good structure need elaboration segments. The great essays will have prominent elaboration segments that are on the longer side while still being clear, without unnecessary details or, especially important, without excessive repetition. The best essays will have body paragraph structures where the elaboration segment include a mini-rebuttal to the main logic of the body paragraph. For example, if a body paragraph is arguing that “religion has been instrumental the development of humanity by unifying people under a common cause, and thus, ushering a pioneering camaraderie spirit” then a fantastic elaboration sentence could be: “Religion, due to being an organised, collective set of believes and values, can often bridge divides that halted progress from tribal warfare to national conflicts or government animosities. Religion can transcend these other categories because religious set of believes are often more praised due to their moral or divine character, which appeals to people as most individuals want to see themselves as good people. Thus, the fact religion has this unique power to transcend these other societal categories allows it to be an exceptional unifier of otherwise distinct societies; this critically allows for society to progress as it can allow for more cross-border, cross-culture intellectual sharing, collaboration and diverse innovation or alternatively, reduce progress-destroying conflicts”. Moreover, for the above example, a mini rebuttal could be added as part of the elaboration such as “Some may mention examples like the the 4th Crusade which led to the destruction of Constantinople, a city of great knowledge and importance. However, the fact these terrible events happened is not solely because of religion’s unifying effect but rather, because of these groups such as the crusade leaders prioritising glory and greed and using religion as a tool to a means of an end”. Overall, the elaboration is a critical element of the body paragraph and should be a prominent segment and can be identified as the sentences explaining why the argument is true, and how it works, often supported by some evidence examples.
Lastly for body paragraphs and the TEEL structure, are linking sentences. Linking sentences are very important for body paragraph structure because they do two key functions; they summarise the overall argument and clearly relate the argument back to the overall contention. Thus, body paragraphs that lack linking sentences have almost automatically poor body paragraph structure. Linking sentences can be identified in the following way; they are in the end of the body paragraph, relatively short (1-2 sentences) and often have some key words or phrases such as “overall”, “so”, “summary”, “in short” and such synonyms. Most importantly for identifying linking sentences is they will do the aforementioned critical functions; summarise the body paragraph’s argument and relate to the essay’s overall contention. You can identify if a linking sentence does relate it back to an overall contention by analysing if linking sentence shows any clear connections or links between the argument and contention. For example, an exemplary linking sentence for a body paragraph arguing “music can help people’s social lives” as part of an example essay’s contention of “music is critical for a life well lived” is this: “Overall, music can be an extremely empowering tool to bring people closer together, share moments, stories and form strong bonds that can bring unique joy for a lifetime”. In this short linking sentence, the argument is linked to the overall contention because music is bringing more joy, thus critical for a life well lived.
As a reminder, a body paragraph can be identified in an essay in the following manner: first, if the paragraph uses any semblance of the TEEL structure. Second, once you have correctly identified the introduction paragraph using the aforementioned introduction structure explanation above, the body paragraphs will usually be below this introduction paragraph. Lastly, if it is the last paragraph of the essay and does not use a clear TEEL structure and seems to be concluding the essay or proposing a call to action, this final paragraph is likely to be a conclusion paragraph and not a conclusion paragraph; the body paragraphs are above the conclusion paragraph.
Finally, we are up to the last segment of an essay’s overall structure; the conclusion! The conclusion’s structure has overall three main parts: a summary of the contention, a summary of the arguments and a call to action. The summary of the contention can be brief and is usually the first sentence of the conclusion paragraph. The summary contention is usually 1, maybe 2 sentences maximum. The summary of the arguments can be one or multiple sentences, often after the summary of the contention and can be flexibly written. However, if the summary of the contention or summary of the arguments is too long (for example 4 or 5 sentences long each) then the essay likely is lacking clarity and succinctness, thus, poor for structure. The call to action segment is optional for a good essay or good structure; however, essays that have this are much better, stand out for the reader of the essay and leave a more lasting impression. Regarding structure, these can also be quite flexible regarding if it is a Task A Essay or Task B Essay; it could be one or multiple sentences long and can be identified through relating the contention of the essay to a wider theme, moral message or to support readers and society to adopt a new set of believes, values or actions. Overall, essays that have a conclusion have good structure, even if the conclusion itself doesn’t have all the components needed for a good individual conclusion structure; however, essays with conclusions meeting all the structure criteria elevate essays from having good structure to having great structure assuming the body paragraphs and introduction were also written with good or great structure.
The conclusion paragraph is overall quite similar to the introduction paragraph with some important and critical differences; firstly, the conclusion paragraph is exclusively towards the end of the essay. Second, the conclusion has either minimal or ideally no context surrounding the contention or body paragraphs and instead, has a call to action segment. Similarly to the introduction, the conclusion should NOT have new evidence or new lines of argument not already introduced in the essay. Essays where the conclusion breaks this structure convention will have poor essay structure. It’s very important to distinguish between a call to action and alternatively new arguments or evidence. They are different; a call to action will relate explicitly to the essay’s contention and focus on a bigger take home message. Call to actions won’t use any new explicit evidence. A call to action is not an argument itself within the contention but rather builds on top of the contention. It’s very important not to mistake a call to action with a new argument when giving feedback for students because it would make the feedback less accurate.
How to deliver feedback regarding the essay’s structure:
Apply the above instruction and knowledge on what composes a great essay structure and give feedback to any potential essays in two ways. First, provide a one line summary of how good the structure of the essay was from very poor, poor, okay, good, very good and exceptional. If an essay has basically no introduction, conclusion or clear body paragraphs, then it is a very poor essay structure wise. If an essay has an introduction, no conclusion and unstructured body paragraphs, or alternatively no introduction, a conclusion and unstructured body paragraphs then it is a poor essay structure wise. If an essay has an introduction, conclusion and body paragraphs, even if not all body paragraphs follow the TEEL structure or alternatively, either the conclusion or introduction have some missing segments then it is also an okay essay structure wise. In contrast, a good essay structure will have all macro components of an essay (introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion) and have almost all macro components in their internal structures present. For example, almost all their body paragraphs will have a clear TEEL structure in the manner described above. The introduction and conclusions will have all or almost all their respective segments, for example the conclusion would have a clear summary of contention, summary of arguments and call to action. The excellent essay will have all macro components of the essay with each component having internal structures exactly as ideally described in the above instructions (for example, their TEEL paragraphs will have the elaboration segments being prominent with a mini rebuttal while a “good” essay may have a short elaboration with no mini rebuttal). Essays commonly have either have two large body paragraphs or three moderately sized body paragraphs; essays with four body paragraphs can work as long as all TEEL components are present. However, one body paragraphs are too short, thus, be part of very poor or poor essays. Once an essay’s structure has been evaluated and summarised in one of those categories, then provide feedback through the second way.
The second way is to give specific feedback for each specific macro component of an essay. So, for each macro component, you will give feedback describing if the overall structure of that macro component was poor, good or excellent. If the essay’s macro component did not follow any of the instructions above it is of poor structure. If it did follow almost all of the instructions mentioned above, then it is good. Finally, if the macro component followed all the instructions above in their ideal, best format, then it has excellent structure. For example, if an essay had body paragraphs that did not follow the TEEL structure, outline why the sentences in the body paragraph didn’t fit the aforementioned TEEL structure description and overall describe it as having good structure. Alternatively, if the conclusion was missing a summary of contention, summary of arguments and barely had a call to action, state that when giving feedback for the conclusion specifically and say it has a poor conclusion structure. Overall, this feedback for each macro component should be a paragraph maximum in terms of length.
Please consider the following essay.
Essay
Scientific thinking has caused some of the greatest advances known to mankind; but bluntly applying the scientific method to the social “sciences” has been overall very detrimental. Science is a method of inquiry, where one creates an idea of how something works, tests it and see if their idea was supported. In the previous 20th century, many of the now called “social” sciences (principally psychology, economics, sociology, etc) went through a legitimacy crisis as many key authors from Sigmund Freud to Karl Jung began being questioned as just proposing baseless theories; and for the last 40 years, social sciences have attempted to legitimise itself by being more quantitative, very strictly following the scientific method generally. However, these efforts continue to fail because the “social” sciences are not a science at all due to three key factors: the social sciences observe distinctively different natural phenomena from the other sciences, the social sciences can derive understanding and value without the scientific method and this wave of pure scientific approach is actually limiting the progress of the social sciences.
The social sciences observe phenomena that are too sophisticated for modern science to accurately model. When we think of the traditional sciences, particularly the now named “natural” sciences, many of them observe phenomena that have distinct characteristics. For example, in physics many (although not all) objects move and interact through basic, fundamental motions (Newton’s Laws) and properties of physical objects don’t usually change based on who is observing (other than more sophisticated phenomena such as light) or the opinions of who is observing the phenomena, or do these objects have the ability to adapt and think to do a different property. The natural sciences, especially physics and chemistry, are much easier to observe, measure and draw reliable, quantitative solutions from simple hypotheses. In contrast, the social sciences such as linguistics have no shared, agreed understanding of universal principles regarding fundamental questions like “how has language emerged in humans”. There are different philosophies such as linguists who believe language is taught versus innate; however, no universal, measurable fundamentals. As one of the founders of linguistics and the “innate” side of the debate, Professor Noam Chomsky, puts it “science is a blunt tool that can deeply answer the ‘how’ of basic elements and compounds, but once it starts trying to understanding biological systems like the brain and let alone the interaction between these brains and their language; your guess is as good as mine”. The key difference is the social sciences don’t have inherent, measurable foundational laws that govern their processes; and the subjects are overall, much, much more dynamic and complex. While some may say the physical sciences are complex too, no doubt, rocket science is complex. However, there are fundamental laws, fundamental ways to accurately, mathematically measure and model rocket sciences; but not for economics as much as economists like Keynes or Hayek may try. Thus, the scientific method is not an accurate instrument to understand the social sciences.
The social sciences can derive value and understanding without the scientific method, and thus, don’t need to be a science at all. The previously mentioned push decades ago to quantify and “scientify” the social sciences had some basis rebutallers would argue; the social sciences was entrenched with dogmas, biases and unverifiable claims that made it difficult to navigate what was credible to what was not. Science is a very verifiable tool, as a hypothesis can only ever be supported but not definitely proven, as a future experiment may disprove the hypothesis that hold today. However, many of the greatest contributions to the social sciences did not come from the social sciences at all; take for example founder of psychology, Sigmund Freud. His work on how inner suppressed emotions, egos and desires impacts our mental health led to psychoanalysis, which for the first time, helped millions of people understand, label and overcome their problems by tackling their “inner demons”. This contribution, even if tainted by the biases and perceptions of his time, was so fundamental and pivotal that it changed psychology for the next 20 years and inspired countless foundational psychology thinkers like Carl Jung. Today, there are arguably no such great thinkers, as most psychology is focused on testing narrow, limited hypotheses and like the other sciences, publishing high impact papers instead of revolutionising our understanding of human behaviour. Science is a powerful tool, but the social sciences can use philosophy, observation, novel forms of testing and theorising to get insightful conclusions like famous psychologist Albert Bandura did to theorise social learning theory (SLT). The social sciences is not limited to using only the scientific method through traditional quantitative means to derive valuable understanding; after all, SLT allowed us to greatly and positively reform human systems like the prison system. Overall, the social sciences can bring value to society without exclusively relying on the scientific method.
Lastly, the poor implementation of the scientific method in the social sciences has been detrimental to the field and consequently, humanity overall. Social sciences, such as anthropology, often had much support to implement scientific reasoning to help eliminate human bias in anthropology. In the 19th and 20th century, many anthropology theories were plagued by extreme biases of the time, ranging from racial biases of African human beings able inherently inferior and subservient to even well intentioned, subconscious biases such as assuming the Amazon rainforest could not sustain large scale organised life because it does not do so today, amongst other biased beliefs. While the scientific method has helped eradicate some of these biases, such as using ultrasonic mapping tools to find hidden cities in the Brazilian Amazon (2022), in many instances the scientific method is used poorly and engraves biases further. For example, in Hayekian economics, various narrow scientific experiments and mathematical models are used to explain that economies must all adhere to certain principles, such as functioning smoothly only in regulation-free market-based systems. F.A Hayek the economist was famous for using quantitative and scientific experiments to back up his claims; yet many of his theories nowadays have become obsolete, inaccurate and covered with biases. For example, in practice, if markets have no controls, those in power are encouraged to abuse and monopolise, not to innovate inherently. Thus, the poor implementation of the scientific method was utilised to support worse understandings of the social sciences; and further, the scientific method is not only poorly used to gain understanding but poorly used to justify understandings; after all, Hayek’s theories were heavily favoured by the wealthy of Britain in the early 20th century partially because his theories benefited them; they advocated for a free for all, no taxes, no government oversight economy. All this poor implementation of the scientific method regresses the social sciences.
In conclusion, the social sciences are not truly a science and restricting to such has been detrimental. The social sciences deals with topics that the modern scientific method cannot accurately measure, experiment and model; the social sciences can effectively use alternative tools of understanding and the often poor implementation of the scientific thinking has in many cases, done more harm than good. If our society wants the social sciences to become expansive and pioneering again, we must remove the stigma of them not being a science in the first place.
Instruction 3: Fluency (V1)
The following are instructions to analyse the fluency of the essay that was provided previously in this conversation.
There are four aspects of fluency to analyse in a given essay: grammar, spelling, vocabulary and flow. First, analyse if there are any grammar mistakes in the essay. A grammar mistake is any incorrect usage of a word or piece of punctuation in writing. In other words, it’s a deviation from established Australian English grammatical rules. There are a wide variety of grammar mistakes; however, be especially attentive regarding these common mistakes after reading the whole sentence and considering the wider context of the essay:
1. Your vs. you're
Much like to and too, your and you’re are homophones. That means they sound the same when spoken aloud but have two different meanings.
Your is a possessive pronoun. It indicates that something belongs to a singular second person.
2. Who vs. whom
Who is the subject of a sentence, whereas whom is the object of a sentence.
3. Who's vs. whose
Who’s is a contraction of who is. Whose is the possessive form of who, a relative pronoun.
4. Affect vs. effect
Affect is a verb that means “to cause an effect.” Effect is a noun that refers to a result.
5. Who vs. that
Who refers to a person. That refers to an inanimate object. However, that can also refer to a group of people in cases where the group, rather than its members, is emphasised.
6. That vs. which
That is used to introduce a clause that adds necessary information to a sentence. Which is used to introduce a clause that adds detail but isn’t critical to the sentence.
7. I.e. vs. e.g.
I.e. is short for id est and is used to clarify statements. E.g. is short for exempli gratia and is used to provide examples.
8. Then vs. than
Then indicates when something will happen. Than is used to compare people or things.
9. Each and every
Each refers to two items. Every refers to three or more items. Additionally, each refers to the individual items in a group, while every refers to the group as a whole.
10. More than vs. over
More than indicates the literal quantity of things being discussed. Over can indicate an object’s physical position or a figurative amount larger than another mentioned in the same sentence.
11. Less vs. fewer
Less is used to describe an abstract or otherwise uncountable amount of items. Fewer is used for countable numbers of items.
12. Me vs. I
I and me are both first-person singular pronouns. Use I when you’re the subject of the sentence and me when you’re the object of the sentence.
13. A lot vs. allot vs. alot
A lot can be a pronoun or an adverb. It means “often” or “a large amount.” Allot is a verb that means “to distribute.” Alot is not a word. Avoid it in your writing.
14. Farther vs. further
Farther refers to literal distance. Further means “more.”
15. Like vs. such as
Like is used to make a comparison, while such as is used to provide specific examples.
16. May vs. might
Generally, may is used in the present tense to ask for permission and to indicate something that is likely to happen. Might is used with the past tense and to describe things that are either unlikely or didn’t happen.
17. Past vs. passed
Past refers to something that has already happened. It can be a noun, an adjective, a preposition, or an adverb. Passed is a verb.
18 Based off vs. based on
This is an example of language evolving, and perhaps one day, based off will be considered grammatically correct. But currently, based on is considered to be the correct phrasing. Both of these phrases are used to indicate the facts or circumstances that drove a specific decision or conclusion.
19. Compliment vs. complement
A compliment is a kind word or bit of praise for another person or thing. To complement someone or something means to enhance their skills or assets with other skills or assets.
20. Misplaced modifiers
A misplaced modifier is a word or phrase that’s too far away from the noun it’s modifying. A misplaced modifier can make a sentence confusing for readers. Here is an example of a sentence with a misplaced modifier, which is bolded:
21. Passive voice
The passive voice isn’t inherently incorrect, but many writers use it when the active voice would be a more accurate, clearer choice.
Passive voice: Breakfast was prepared by me.
Active voice: I prepared breakfast.
22. Possessive nouns
Possessive nouns are versions of nouns that show ownership. Often, they use apostrophes.
For a singular possessive noun, the apostrophe goes before the s.
23. Commas
Commas are versatile punctuation marks, so it’s easy to use them incorrectly. Commas are used to create short pauses within sentences, such as to separate items in a list, distinguish independent clauses, or note appositives.
24. Semicolons
Semicolons are most frequently used to separate independent clauses within a sentence. They’re also used to separate items in a serial list when those items contain punctuation of their own.
25. Title capitalisation
Although it can vary between style guides, the general rules for title capitalisation are:
Articles are lowercase unless they’re the first or last word of the title
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are always capitalised
26. Apostrophes
Apostrophes create a few types of words:
Contractions (she did = she’d)
Singular possessive nouns (Jason’s)
Shortened colloquial words (it was = ’twas)
27. Punctuation’s place in parentheses
When it comes to parentheses and other punctuation, there are a couple of rules to follow. If the text in parentheses is a complete sentence and is separate from surrounding sentences, the period goes inside the parentheses. Additionally, a phrase that could stand alone as a complete sentence can also be contained inside another complete sentence.
- Incomplete comparisons
When you make a comparison in your writing, you need to mention both (or all) of the things you’re comparing.
29. Em dash vs. en dash vs. hyphen
Em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens are frequently mixed up. Here is a quick look at them:
Em dash: —
En dash: –
Hyphen: –
Use an em dash when another type of punctuation, like parentheses or a pair of commas, doesn’t quite capture the tone you need. Em dashes have a quick, casual connotation, so they’re often used to indicate an aside or sudden tone change in a sentence. However, be extra wary of any essays that use em dashes in their essays because it could mean the essay is autogenerated by AI. In your feedback, if you find any em dashes, make sure to tell the user you spotted em dashes, reference where it was found in the essay, including which sentence, and suggest the user to avoid using em dashes unless relevant.
- Subject/verb agreement
In any sentence, the subject and verb need to be in the same tense.
After considering all the above top 30 common grammar mistakes, give the user a little summary of what mistakes you have spotted in their essay and follow up with suggestions for how correct grammar could have been applied. Remind users that given the time constraints, a student can make some mistakes but overall should be minimal.
Essay
Scientific thinking has caused some of the greatest advances known to mankind; but bluntly applying the scientific method to the social “sciences” has been overall very detrimental. Science is a method of inquiry, where one creates an idea of how something works, tests it and see if their idea was supported. In the previous 20th century, many of the now called “social” sciences (principally psychology, economics, sociology, etc) went through a legitimacy crisis as many key authors from Sigmund Freud to Karl Jung began being questioned as just proposing baseless theories; and for the last 40 years, social sciences have attempted to legitimise itself by being more quantitative, very strictly following the scientific method generally. However, these efforts continue to fail because the “social” sciences are not a science at all due to three key factors: the social sciences observe distinctively different natural phenomena from the other sciences, the social sciences can derive understanding and value without the scientific method and this wave of pure scientific approach is actually limiting the progress of the social sciences.
The social sciences observe phenomena that are too sophisticated for modern science to accurately model. When we think of the traditional sciences, particularly the now named “natural” sciences, many of them observe phenomena that have distinct characteristics. For example, in physics many (although not all) objects move and interact through basic, fundamental motions (Newton’s Laws) and properties of physical objects don’t usually change based on who is observing (other than more sophisticated phenomena such as light) or the opinions of who is observing the phenomena, or do these objects have the ability to adapt and think to do a different property. The natural sciences, especially physics and chemistry, are much easier to observe, measure and draw reliable, quantitative solutions from simple hypotheses. In contrast, the social sciences such as linguistics have no shared, agreed understanding of universal principles regarding fundamental questions like “how has language emerged in humans”. There are different philosophies such as linguists who believe language is taught versus innate; however, no universal, measurable fundamentals. As one of the founders of linguistics and the “innate” side of the debate, Professor Noam Chomsky, puts it “science is a blunt tool that can deeply answer the ‘how’ of basic elements and compounds, but once it starts trying to understanding biological systems like the brain and let alone the interaction between these brains and their language; your guess is as good as mine”. The key difference is the social sciences don’t have inherent, measurable foundational laws that govern their processes; and the subjects are overall, much, much more dynamic and complex. While some may say the physical sciences are complex too, no doubt, rocket science is complex. However, there are fundamental laws, fundamental ways to accurately, mathematically measure and model rocket sciences; but not for economics as much as economists like Keynes or Hayek may try. Thus, the scientific method is not an accurate instrument to understand the social sciences.
The social sciences can derive value and understanding without the scientific method, and thus, don’t need to be a science at all. The previously mentioned push decades ago to quantify and “scientify” the social sciences had some basis rebutallers would argue; the social sciences was entrenched with dogmas, biases and unverifiable claims that made it difficult to navigate what was credible to what was not. Science is a very verifiable tool, as a hypothesis can only ever be supported but not definitely proven, as a future experiment may disprove the hypothesis that hold today. However, many of the greatest contributions to the social sciences did not come from the social sciences at all; take for example founder of psychology, Sigmund Freud. His work on how inner suppressed emotions, egos and desires impacts our mental health led to psychoanalysis, which for the first time, helped millions of people understand, label and overcome their problems by tackling their “inner demons”. This contribution, even if tainted by the biases and perceptions of his time, was so fundamental and pivotal that it changed psychology for the next 20 years and inspired countless foundational psychology thinkers like Carl Jung. Today, there are arguably no such great thinkers, as most psychology is focused on testing narrow, limited hypotheses and like the other sciences, publishing high impact papers instead of revolutionising our understanding of human behaviour. Science is a powerful tool, but the social sciences can use philosophy, observation, novel forms of testing and theorising to get insightful conclusions like famous psychologist Albert Bandura did to theorise social learning theory (SLT). The social sciences is not limited to using only the scientific method through traditional quantitative means to derive valuable understanding; after all, SLT allowed us to greatly and positively reform human systems like the prison system. Overall, the social sciences can bring value to society without exclusively relying on the scientific method.
Lastly, the poor implementation of the scientific method in the social sciences has been detrimental to the field and consequently, humanity overall. Social sciences, such as anthropology, often had much support to implement scientific reasoning to help eliminate human bias in anthropology. In the 19th and 20th century, many anthropology theories were plagued by extreme biases of the time, ranging from racial biases of African human beings able inherently inferior and subservient to even well intentioned, subconscious biases such as assuming the Amazon rainforest could not sustain large scale organised life because it does not do so today, amongst other biased beliefs. While the scientific method has helped eradicate some of these biases, such as using ultrasonic mapping tools to find hidden cities in the Brazilian Amazon (2022), in many instances the scientific method is used poorly and engraves biases further. For example, in Hayekian economics, various narrow scientific experiments and mathematical models are used to explain that economies must all adhere to certain principles, such as functioning smoothly only in regulation-free market-based systems. F.A Hayek the economist was famous for using quantitative and scientific experiments to back up his claims; yet many of his theories nowadays have become obsolete, inaccurate and covered with biases. For example, in practice, if markets have no controls, those in power are encouraged to abuse and monopolise, not to innovate inherently. Thus, the poor implementation of the scientific method was utilised to support worse understandings of the social sciences; and further, the scientific method is not only poorly used to gain understanding but poorly used to justify understandings; after all, Hayek’s theories were heavily favoured by the wealthy of Britain in the early 20th century partially because his theories benefited them; they advocated for a free for all, no taxes, no government oversight economy. All this poor implementation of the scientific method regresses the social sciences.
In conclusion, the social sciences are not truly a science and restricting to such has been detrimental. The social sciences deals with topics that the modern scientific method cannot accurately measure, experiment and model; the social sciences can effectively use alternative tools of understanding and the often poor implementation of the scientific thinking has in many cases, done more harm than good. If our society wants the social sciences to become expansive and pioneering again, we must remove the stigma of them not being a science in the first place.
Instruction 4: Quality of Logic V1
One of the most important characteristics of an essay to assess is the quality of the logic present in the essay. Above, we have analysed the themes, structure, and fluency of the same essay you see below; now we will analyse the quality of logic from this same essay using the following instructions.
Instruction 4: Quality of Logic
The quality of logic refers to the strength of the rationality, logic and persuasiveness of the arguments made in the essay. First, is how much space is the author actually dedicating for explaining the logic and rational of their arguments? The quality of logic will be present primarily in the elaboration sentences described in the "Instructions: Structure" segment above; as a refresher, this means the elaboration sentences are found in body paragraphs, usually accompanied by some supportive examples of evidence in the middle of the body paragraph. Thus, identify in the body paragraph how much the elaboration sentences compose the body paragraph. If there are no elaboration sentences or one sentence, and they make up a very small percentage of the word count from the body paragraph; then the quality of logic is likely poor. If there are roughly two sentences, and they make up a moderate percentage of the word count from the body paragraph; then the quality of logic is likely okay. Moreover, if there are many sentences for elaboration, and they make up large percentage of the word count from the body paragraph; then the quality of logic is likely good. if there are many sentences for elaboration, and they make up large percentage of the word count from the body paragraph, and it includes a mini-rebuttal to their own argument, then the quality of logic is likely excellent. However, if the elaboration sentences seem to have excessive sentences that are repetitive, vague or add little value, then the quality of logic goes back to being okay level.
Essay
Scientific thinking has caused some of the greatest advances known to mankind; but bluntly applying the scientific method to the social “sciences” has been overall very detrimental. Science is a method of inquiry, where one creates an idea of how something works, tests it and see if their idea was supported. In the previous 20th century, many of the now called “social” sciences (principally psychology, economics, sociology, etc) went through a legitimacy crisis as many key authors from Sigmund Freud to Karl Jung began being questioned as just proposing baseless theories; and for the last 40 years, social sciences have attempted to legitimise itself by being more quantitative, very strictly following the scientific method generally. However, these efforts continue to fail because the “social” sciences are not a science at all due to three key factors: the social sciences observe distinctively different natural phenomena from the other sciences, the social sciences can derive understanding and value without the scientific method and this wave of pure scientific approach is actually limiting the progress of the social sciences.
The social sciences observe phenomena that are too sophisticated for modern science to accurately model. When we think of the traditional sciences, particularly the now named “natural” sciences, many of them observe phenomena that have distinct characteristics. For example, in physics many (although not all) objects move and interact through basic, fundamental motions (Newton’s Laws) and properties of physical objects don’t usually change based on who is observing (other than more sophisticated phenomena such as light) or the opinions of who is observing the phenomena, or do these objects have the ability to adapt and think to do a different property. The natural sciences, especially physics and chemistry, are much easier to observe, measure and draw reliable, quantitative solutions from simple hypotheses. In contrast, the social sciences such as linguistics have no shared, agreed understanding of universal principles regarding fundamental questions like “how has language emerged in humans”. There are different philosophies such as linguists who believe language is taught versus innate; however, no universal, measurable fundamentals. As one of the founders of linguistics and the “innate” side of the debate, Professor Noam Chomsky, puts it “science is a blunt tool that can deeply answer the ‘how’ of basic elements and compounds, but once it starts trying to understanding biological systems like the brain and let alone the interaction between these brains and their language; your guess is as good as mine”. The key difference is the social sciences don’t have inherent, measurable foundational laws that govern their processes; and the subjects are overall, much, much more dynamic and complex. While some may say the physical sciences are complex too, no doubt, rocket science is complex. However, there are fundamental laws, fundamental ways to accurately, mathematically measure and model rocket sciences; but not for economics as much as economists like Keynes or Hayek may try. Thus, the scientific method is not an accurate instrument to understand the social sciences.
The social sciences can derive value and understanding without the scientific method, and thus, don’t need to be a science at all. The previously mentioned push decades ago to quantify and “scientify” the social sciences had some basis rebutallers would argue; the social sciences was entrenched with dogmas, biases and unverifiable claims that made it difficult to navigate what was credible to what was not. Science is a very verifiable tool, as a hypothesis can only ever be supported but not definitely proven, as a future experiment may disprove the hypothesis that hold today. However, many of the greatest contributions to the social sciences did not come from the social sciences at all; take for example founder of psychology, Sigmund Freud. His work on how inner suppressed emotions, egos and desires impacts our mental health led to psychoanalysis, which for the first time, helped millions of people understand, label and overcome their problems by tackling their “inner demons”. This contribution, even if tainted by the biases and perceptions of his time, was so fundamental and pivotal that it changed psychology for the next 20 years and inspired countless foundational psychology thinkers like Carl Jung. Today, there are arguably no such great thinkers, as most psychology is focused on testing narrow, limited hypotheses and like the other sciences, publishing high impact papers instead of revolutionising our understanding of human behaviour. Science is a powerful tool, but the social sciences can use philosophy, observation, novel forms of testing and theorising to get insightful conclusions like famous psychologist Albert Bandura did to theorise social learning theory (SLT). The social sciences is not limited to using only the scientific method through traditional quantitative means to derive valuable understanding; after all, SLT allowed us to greatly and positively reform human systems like the prison system. Overall, the social sciences can bring value to society without exclusively relying on the scientific method.
Lastly, the poor implementation of the scientific method in the social sciences has been detrimental to the field and consequently, humanity overall. Social sciences, such as anthropology, often had much support to implement scientific reasoning to help eliminate human bias in anthropology. In the 19th and 20th century, many anthropology theories were plagued by extreme biases of the time, ranging from racial biases of African human beings able inherently inferior and subservient to even well intentioned, subconscious biases such as assuming the Amazon rainforest could not sustain large scale organised life because it does not do so today, amongst other biased beliefs. While the scientific method has helped eradicate some of these biases, such as using ultrasonic mapping tools to find hidden cities in the Brazilian Amazon (2022), in many instances the scientific method is used poorly and engraves biases further. For example, in Hayekian economics, various narrow scientific experiments and mathematical models are used to explain that economies must all adhere to certain principles, such as functioning smoothly only in regulation-free market-based systems. F.A Hayek the economist was famous for using quantitative and scientific experiments to back up his claims; yet many of his theories nowadays have become obsolete, inaccurate and covered with biases. For example, in practice, if markets have no controls, those in power are encouraged to abuse and monopolise, not to innovate inherently. Thus, the poor implementation of the scientific method was utilised to support worse understandings of the social sciences; and further, the scientific method is not only poorly used to gain understanding but poorly used to justify understandings; after all, Hayek’s theories were heavily favoured by the wealthy of Britain in the early 20th century partially because his theories benefited them; they advocated for a free for all, no taxes, no government oversight economy. All this poor implementation of the scientific method regresses the social sciences.
In conclusion, the social sciences are not truly a science and restricting to such has been detrimental. The social sciences deals with topics that the modern scientific method cannot accurately measure, experiment and model; the social sciences can effectively use alternative tools of understanding and the often poor implementation of the scientific thinking has in many cases, done more harm than good. If our society wants the social sciences to become expansive and pioneering again, we must remove the stigma of them not being a science in the first place.
Instruction 5: Quality of Examples (V1)
One of the biggest differentiators of essays is the quality of examples; essay that have strong, relevant and relatable examples score well. Above, we have analysed the themes, structure, fluency and quality of logic of the same essay you see below; now we will analyse the quality of examples from this same essay using the following instructions.
Instructions: Quality of Examples
To begin evaluating an essay's quality of examples, we ought to determine what determines the quality of an essay's examples. There are three traits that determine the quality of examples; strength, relevance and relatability. First, how to determine the strength of an example? This refers to how impactful the example is in supporting the author's argument, often found in the elaboration segment of body paragraphs. As a refresher, elaboration sentences are found in the middle of body paragraphs and they are focused exclusively on explaining the rationale behind the argument, and possibly addressing any rebuttals or issues with the rationale of the argument itself. Thus, strong essays will be impactful and reliable; for example, references to SPECIFIC studies (not just vague references to studies), books, authors and statistics. Weak examples will often be very vague, seem unimportant or niche.
Second, the relevance of examples is critical. An example can be super strong but if it's not supporting the actual argument or part of the argument's context, then the example is of little support. Identify the relevance of an example by detecting if the evidence is in the same theme or context as the argument itself. Moreover, see if the example is refers to similar topics as the argument and lastly, if you read the example evidence by itself, could you imagine the kind of argument the author proposed? If yes, then the example is relevant evidence. However, if the examples seem to be about different & distinct themes, contexts, topics and is not integrated well with the argument, it is likely of little relevance.
Thirdly, examples that are relatable are much stronger, since the readers of the essay can resonate more with the examples, thus, more inclined to agree with the examples being supportive of the arguments due to a personal, favourable bias. Biases affect everyone, readers included. For the GAMSAT, the readers of the essays are Australian volunteers. Examples that can be readily found in Australian and generally anglophone media, science and content are often more relatable to the audience. Thus, if the examples are more relatable, it's more likely to be well perceived and thus, better examples. However, relatabilty only strengthens examples as long as the examples are strong and relevant first. If the example is very relatable but weak and irrelevant, then relatability doesn't matter at all. However, if the evidence is already strong and relevant, then having the example being relatable makes it truly exceptional.
Thus, when assessing an essay's quality of examples look for these three characteristics; if there are no examples at all (regardless of strength, relevance or relatability), then the quality of examples is automatically very poor. If there are some examples but they are all of low strength, relevance and reliability, then they are poor examples. If they are strong but not relevant or relatable, then the example is of poor quality. If they are relevant but not strong or relatable, then the example is of poor quality. If they are relatable but not relevant or strong, then the example is of poor quality. If they are strong and relevant but not relatable, then the example is of good quality. If they are strong, relevant and relatable, then the example is of exceptional quality. Use these instructions to give summarise the feedback of the quality of examples into one of these categories (very poor, poor, good, exceptional) and then explain to the reader in one paragraph why they received this score and how they could improve it following the guidance of these instructions.
Essay
Scientific thinking has caused some of the greatest advances known to mankind; but bluntly applying the scientific method to the social “sciences” has been overall very detrimental. Science is a method of inquiry, where one creates an idea of how something works, tests it and see if their idea was supported. In the previous 20th century, many of the now called “social” sciences (principally psychology, economics, sociology, etc) went through a legitimacy crisis as many key authors from Sigmund Freud to Karl Jung began being questioned as just proposing baseless theories; and for the last 40 years, social sciences have attempted to legitimise itself by being more quantitative, very strictly following the scientific method generally. However, these efforts continue to fail because the “social” sciences are not a science at all due to three key factors: the social sciences observe distinctively different natural phenomena from the other sciences, the social sciences can derive understanding and value without the scientific method and this wave of pure scientific approach is actually limiting the progress of the social sciences.
The social sciences observe phenomena that are too sophisticated for modern science to accurately model. When we think of the traditional sciences, particularly the now named “natural” sciences, many of them observe phenomena that have distinct characteristics. For example, in physics many (although not all) objects move and interact through basic, fundamental motions (Newton’s Laws) and properties of physical objects don’t usually change based on who is observing (other than more sophisticated phenomena such as light) or the opinions of who is observing the phenomena, or do these objects have the ability to adapt and think to do a different property. The natural sciences, especially physics and chemistry, are much easier to observe, measure and draw reliable, quantitative solutions from simple hypotheses. In contrast, the social sciences such as linguistics have no shared, agreed understanding of universal principles regarding fundamental questions like “how has language emerged in humans”. There are different philosophies such as linguists who believe language is taught versus innate; however, no universal, measurable fundamentals. As one of the founders of linguistics and the “innate” side of the debate, Professor Noam Chomsky, puts it “science is a blunt tool that can deeply answer the ‘how’ of basic elements and compounds, but once it starts trying to understanding biological systems like the brain and let alone the interaction between these brains and their language; your guess is as good as mine”. The key difference is the social sciences don’t have inherent, measurable foundational laws that govern their processes; and the subjects are overall, much, much more dynamic and complex. While some may say the physical sciences are complex too, no doubt, rocket science is complex. However, there are fundamental laws, fundamental ways to accurately, mathematically measure and model rocket sciences; but not for economics as much as economists like Keynes or Hayek may try. Thus, the scientific method is not an accurate instrument to understand the social sciences.
The social sciences can derive value and understanding without the scientific method, and thus, don’t need to be a science at all. The previously mentioned push decades ago to quantify and “scientify” the social sciences had some basis rebutallers would argue; the social sciences was entrenched with dogmas, biases and unverifiable claims that made it difficult to navigate what was credible to what was not. Science is a very verifiable tool, as a hypothesis can only ever be supported but not definitely proven, as a future experiment may disprove the hypothesis that hold today. However, many of the greatest contributions to the social sciences did not come from the social sciences at all; take for example founder of psychology, Sigmund Freud. His work on how inner suppressed emotions, egos and desires impacts our mental health led to psychoanalysis, which for the first time, helped millions of people understand, label and overcome their problems by tackling their “inner demons”. This contribution, even if tainted by the biases and perceptions of his time, was so fundamental and pivotal that it changed psychology for the next 20 years and inspired countless foundational psychology thinkers like Carl Jung. Today, there are arguably no such great thinkers, as most psychology is focused on testing narrow, limited hypotheses and like the other sciences, publishing high impact papers instead of revolutionising our understanding of human behaviour. Science is a powerful tool, but the social sciences can use philosophy, observation, novel forms of testing and theorising to get insightful conclusions like famous psychologist Albert Bandura did to theorise social learning theory (SLT). The social sciences is not limited to using only the scientific method through traditional quantitative means to derive valuable understanding; after all, SLT allowed us to greatly and positively reform human systems like the prison system. Overall, the social sciences can bring value to society without exclusively relying on the scientific method.
Lastly, the poor implementation of the scientific method in the social sciences has been detrimental to the field and consequently, humanity overall. Social sciences, such as anthropology, often had much support to implement scientific reasoning to help eliminate human bias in anthropology. In the 19th and 20th century, many anthropology theories were plagued by extreme biases of the time, ranging from racial biases of African human beings able inherently inferior and subservient to even well intentioned, subconscious biases such as assuming the Amazon rainforest could not sustain large scale organised life because it does not do so today, amongst other biased beliefs. While the scientific method has helped eradicate some of these biases, such as using ultrasonic mapping tools to find hidden cities in the Brazilian Amazon (2022), in many instances the scientific method is used poorly and engraves biases further. For example, in Hayekian economics, various narrow scientific experiments and mathematical models are used to explain that economies must all adhere to certain principles, such as functioning smoothly only in regulation-free market-based systems. F.A Hayek the economist was famous for using quantitative and scientific experiments to back up his claims; yet many of his theories nowadays have become obsolete, inaccurate and covered with biases. For example, in practice, if markets have no controls, those in power are encouraged to abuse and monopolise, not to innovate inherently. Thus, the poor implementation of the scientific method was utilised to support worse understandings of the social sciences; and further, the scientific method is not only poorly used to gain understanding but poorly used to justify understandings; after all, Hayek’s theories were heavily favoured by the wealthy of Britain in the early 20th century partially because his theories benefited them; they advocated for a free for all, no taxes, no government oversight economy. All this poor implementation of the scientific method regresses the social sciences.
In conclusion, the social sciences are not truly a science and restricting to such has been detrimental. The social sciences deals with topics that the modern scientific method cannot accurately measure, experiment and model; the social sciences can effectively use alternative tools of understanding and the often poor implementation of the scientific thinking has in many cases, done more harm than good. If our society wants the social sciences to become expansive and pioneering again, we must remove the stigma of them not being a science in the first place.
