Dear Editor,

Whether the social scientist called her task polling or forecasting, our recent general election results (so far) have been intellectually damaging to many (most?).

One damage-mitigating option is to take refuge in ‘margin of error’. Margin of error is not just an academic admission of built-in limitations of the task of political polling/forecasting, but a tacit and thus easily missed point; that polling/forecasting is tantamount to guesswork, though clothed in sophisticated academic language and qualifications, provisos and caveats.

My respected and academically superior friends in the social sciences will forgive me because I know precious little about the disciplines, since I have never taken a course in any of the disciplines despite my long years of study (undergraduate and postgraduate). But ponder this: On the morning before election day (February 24, 2016) at about 6:15 am, I sent the following e-mail to the team doing The Morning Watch on Love 101 FM,

“I don’t call the Lord’s name on anything, so my hunch is that the JLP [Jamaica Labour Party] will upset the PNP [People’s National Party] and there will be a few seat shockers. If Mrs [Juliet] Holness wins a seat, it is all over, but for the actual general counting. That’s my one-eyed story and I am sticking to it.” FYI: I am recovering from retinal detachment surgery on my left eye.

Now, you judge. No knowledge of the social sciences, no prophetic word from my God, but the sophisticated social scientists who dared to pronounce in public fared no better than my hunch.

I would recommend to all social scientists that they suck humble salt; find and read chapter eight of the 1984 edition of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s book After Virtue, which has the heading ‘The Character of Generalisations in Social Science and their lack of Predictive Power’.

I close with one, hopefully inviting quotation from that chapter, “…the aim of the social sciences is to explain specifically social phenomena by supplying law-like generalisations which do not differ in their logical form from those applicable to natural phenomena in general, precisely the kind of law-like generalisations to which the managerial expert would have to appeal…the salient fact about [the social sciences] is the absence of the discovery of any law-like generalisations whatsoever.” (page 88)

Interestingly, the standard for a genuine prophet in the Bible allows no margin of error. It’s 100 per cent accuracy every time or death!

Rev Clinton Chisholm

clintchis@yahoo.com