Philosophy Versus Science

[Sheldon]

I don’t understand what you mean by “failing to show any of their work”? The data has been linked to (though you may have to pay to access some of it, like they did), the methodology is described in Sections 4 and 5, the code they used for analysis is linked to, results are reported and analysed, and there are tables and diagrams and an appendix.

I mean, sure, they don’t show the statistical tests in full detail, but that’s standard, and there may be some word limit imposed anyway.

Again, any researcher who is suspicious can test their findings using the same data and details they have provided.

they do things that science can't do and can't criticize. 

Science is a collection of methods designed to remove as much subjective bias as possible, in order to better understand objective reality. It cannot examine claims that provide no empirical data, and it cannot examine what does not exist. 

Philosophy can do both those things of course, but to what end? 

I'd say the Nicomachean Ethics is certainly one of them. Though the ethics it describes are certainly different from our own, one of the great benefits of the book is to get a clear idea of what an alternative ethics would look like. 

One need never have read that book to understand that human morality and ethics are relative of course, nor does one need to have studied philosophy. Perhaps it is quicker to help people understand weak or poorly reasoned arguments if they have a structured education that achieves this, but learning and understanding common logical fallacies, to avoid using them, and discard arguments that contain them, would probably be the quickest root to achieving that. 

I have encountered people who claim to have a degree in philosophy who use such fallacies in their arguments. Religious philosophers in particular seem to indulge them. 

So in this context, it is clear philosophy is not as useful as science, as the latter is exponentially better at understanding objective reality.