Science

... may not be "hard sciences," but conducting rigorous research in these areas is a challenge because they can't rely on the same controls to ensure internal and external validity as can the physical sciences. For example, I am a behavioral scientist and college professor who conducts research in organizations. Organizations don't normally (meaning hardly ever) allow researchers to use experimental designs. Without a rigorous design, there is no random assignment, there is no control group and there is no treatment group like you might find in a laboratory study by an experimental psychologist or biologist or medical researcher. Organizational researchers and economists have to statistically control for exogenous factors. Even researchers in psychology often have rely on subjects whose populations might not reflect the overall population, for example, relying on college freshmen and sophomores or white mice as subjects of their experiments. Results from these studies might not have the level of external validity a researcher would want. Social sciences also use a good deal of survey research, which relies on the honesty of the subjects, which can be problematic when asking them questions about sensitive issues. Even assessing something as seemingly simple as "job satisfaction" can be problematic, partly due to how the construct is defined and how it is operationalized.

I know it's a thing for some so-called "hard science" people to mock social and behavioral research. I suggest if they want to help they should get out of their labs and think about how they would research psychological and sociological phenomena. Better yet, they can give me access to their own organizations so I can conduct research there instead of having to go out hat in hand to drum up research sites.