[_Nat_]

It's difficult for me to appreciate how works in such fields might be "intellectual".

I feel like they're doing LLM-like opinion-pieces and acting as though the results are deeply meaningful. But the mechanics and results seem shallow and uninteresting.

In fields like Physics and Engineering, there're plenty of cranks who say crazy things. But in such fields, reality tears those people down -- their works fail; their perpetual-motion machines don't tend to generate infinite-energy; their snake-oil doesn't seem to open people's latent-psychic abilities; their mathematical theorems fall apart. Reality is a harsh blade that cuts them down without mercy. And people in those fields learn to be harsh/critical themselves, as to survive the constant assaults from reality's judgement.

But the softer fields lack such harshness -- they're comically tolerant. It's like they're all whimsy; there'd seem to be little incentive for an academic to even bother with the extreme costs associated with rationality, as they'd just get out-competed on the metrics that they're actually judged by.

I mean, I don't care to see what (the early versions of) ChatGPT have to say of math; while chatbots might spit out a lot of junk, their rantings would be shallow and disinteresting. Why ought we have any more regard for the same mindlessness in other fields?

Point being that it seems off-topic to discuss such matters in terms of intellectualism -- unless we're using "intellectual" so loosely as to include stuff like ChatGPT-generated content.

[WaitWaitWha]

> But the softer fields lack such harshness -- they're comically tolerant.

Anecdotally, I think the field of psychology is in getting the public ire recently because of this. I read more and more complaints that certain highly touted (published?) therapies are failing and destroying individual lives. The other sub-field I see it is the societal impact of, again, highly touted & published psychology hurting entire classes of people.

The more bombastic the claim, the more likely it becomes de facto "reality". As you describe it, there is no simple & quick way to rationally disprove, and why would they - it is fashionable.

[anotherhue]

It's basically fancy SEO spam for job security. Not that they get any until tenured.