ranting about science and math

I'm going to say this again: my father is a biologist (His expertise is mostly in neural physiology. He does not study humans, and his analysis typically isn't even of the whole organism). As a social psychologist, my regular use of mathematics and my education in the field outclasses his, and this is not anomalous for our fields. Strong statistical knowledge-- which is required for many scientific fields, but I have observed to be most prominent in fields that study complex systems that are experimentally intractable-- also requires matrix algebra and calculus (estimating the area under curves is part of all inferential statistics) as well as a firm understanding of symbolic logic and other aspects of discrete mathematics (a major pre-requisite for computer science). We all use math, and I don't think there's a direct correlation between scientific "hardness" and mathematical skill.

I would argue that perceptions of "soft" to "hard" science are entirely socially-constructed, and detrimental to the scientific endeavor, since they lead to arbitrary divisions and intra-academic elitism that doesn't reflect our actual ability to contribute to general knowledge, and deters interdisciplinary work. A good science will take knowledge about the molecular structure of peptides and understand how that influences (and indeed, is influenced by) complex human social behavior. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, thar be sexism here as well that I hypothesize serves to reinforce these boundaries and hinder scientific progress.