The scientific principle are relativism, objectivity, parsimony, empiricism, ethical neutrality, and determinism. In the definition provided on the slides, Relativism can be interpreted as relation between things. How a change in one system affect another? In terms of cyber security and social science, how the constant bombarding of information overwhelms or changes people behavior? Many people take at face value what they see or hear in the media, like pictures of grand vacations or new must have technology. Are they driven to make poor decisions financially because of this?
Objectivity is the way of study topics free of bias. Technology can be use to study cases with specific metrics and provide answers free of bias if done with a mathematical foundation. The problem arises when the metrics take into consideration societal norms and difference in culture. While patterns can be found in multiple cases, motives and thinking change according to each individual, making each case unique.
Parsimony is the ability to explain as simple as possible a case. In cybercrime, it is difficult to do because each explanation has to take into consideration human behavior. Each crime or behavior is different and simplifying it can detract from the explanation.
Empiricism refer to the study of tangible behavior. With careful and detailed investigation, we can determine cybersecurity empiricism. Being able to provide data and show images carefully obtain and not altered in anyway or form we can provide a high level of credibility to an issue.
Ethical neutrality, which states that scientist must adhere to ethical standards for their research, is really important in cyber security. Credibility in a scientific field is everything and changing studies results to prove a point can result in a case being dismissed or a person being blacklisted from a lifetime work.
Lastly is determinism, which refer to an event is affected or determined by previous ones. While in science is easier to demonstrate through observations, in the social science is more difficult to demonstrated. A person can be influence into committing a crime because of happening in their pass. But as thinking sentients with knowledge of the law, we have to analyze also the choices presented to us.
While we can use principles of science to a certain degree. Cybersecurity and social science have to be study in case to case settings because of human behavior and interaction.