Plausibility, Evidence, Data and All the Data

From Chaos Manor by Jerry Pournelle.

I long ago did an essay on "The Voodoo Science" in which I pointed out that novelists require only plausibility, lawyers need evidence, but science requires data -- and also requires that ALL the data be taken into account, which means going outside closed systems to check with the real world. And that, I think, is the real difference between the fuzzy subjects and the sciences and the humanities: if you endlessly apply logic to a closed system with no chance of checking against reality, you had better have chosen the right closed system -- and we have no way of knowing what that one is.

 The nonsense of Social Justice Theory, Critical Race Theory, Deconstructionism, Post Modernism, Post Colonialism Theory, etc. are all plausible within their own systems.  When forced to operate outside their own closed systems of thought, when forced to deal with all the evidence and all the data they simply are not usefully true.  More tragically, they are destructive of their own adherents.