When dealing with science, often there will be “truths” that lie beyond reach due to the many intangible factors that come across when determining a cause. In social sciences intangible factors include beauty, moral judgements, anomalies in human nature, and so on. There are even often peculiarities in medical science that have yet to be answered such as: the questions of why we dream, or why some have out-of-body experiences (OBE’s). There are some things that science has yet to answer and arguable can not, however, this should not be a reason to “stop striving for the unreachable”. Further, because of those who are answering these questions are most often human (flawed in nature) they come with their own biases and experiences that may subconsciously stray empirical information away from the truth. By attempting to answer these questions systematically, although we may not ever end up having a feasible answer, we can narrow down our search.

In the methodology of using “science” to answer the unexplainable/the more difficult to explain, it is easy to fall into the trap of “method-driven” ways of reaching a conclusion. The article, “The Dying Russians” authored by Masha Green is an example of such investigation. Green proposes the idea that “hope” is the reason for Russia’s high immorality rate in comparison the other developed countries. It can be criticized that a variable such as “hope” can be challenging if not impossible to answer because; how does one measure hope? Green finds this variable that may explain her theory and then draws conclusions and selective facts to fit her theory that “hope” is the culprit. It would have been more convincing had Green went into more detail as to how this variable of “hope” was measured/determined rather than making a broad, objective statement.