Are the soft sciences harder than the hard sciences?

The difference between soft and hard sciences. First of all, what are they?

Hard Science: Physics, Chemistry, Molecular biology &c.

Soft Science: Anthropology, Psychology, Ecology &c.

Soft sciences are more ambiguous. Hard sciences have a backbone, and it doesn't break easily. In physics, an object will always act the same way, but in psychology, there is no prediction for the behaviour of a human being. As reported in the article, the soft sciences are much harder to measure with a number, if indeed measurement is possible in the first place. In the article on page 283-5 from Jared Diamond, the authour does a good job of explaining how difficult it is to take results of tests from ecology or psychology and turn it into numbers, numbers that can be compared with other results. But he says it is possible. It seems harder to do this than to measure something in the realm of hard sciences. Now, I wouldn't know the first thing to do in measuring, to a number, the sweetness of nectar, besides tasting it myself. But that's just because I'm no scientist. Scientists know exactly how to do it, and they've made a system for doing it. Though it would be difficult for me, the chemists can do it without much difficulty. But with the birds and the density of foliage, it was much harder to measure. It took the creativity of MacArthur to solve the problem, and I think that this is one reason that the soft sciences can be much harder than the hard ones. It's the fact that the soft sciences are so ambiguous and vague that makes it so hard to get solid and useful data. It takes a clever mind and creativity to do it (though not to say that hard scientists don't have that) and even then it won't be perfect. This is why perhaps the two types of sciences have been wrongly named.

Why do we often think of the hard sciences as being more reliable in truth seeking? Well, the hard sciences are themselves more reliable. But it depends on what truth we seek. If you want to know why people act the way they do, you're not going to find the answer in physics. But the hard sciences might be easier to understand than, say, psychology. To understand why people act the way they do one should study that before physics, obviously. But psychology is probably the most abstract soft science of all, which might put many people off studying it, and cause them to turn to the warm embrace of the hard sciences, which might not be so hard after all.