This week, on The Editors’ Desk*, Doug Hartmann enumerated and tried to define** six elements of the sociological worldview. Elsewhere on The Society Pages, our many contributors worked to demonstrate that worldview—enjoy!
*That’s right: we all share one desk. It’s adorable. Possibly even adorkable.
**See what I did there? The man never met a conjunction he didn’t like. more...
The U.S. Senate is now deliberating a bill that will fund the National Science Foundation (NSF) and its research programs for 2013. Reports indicate that the Senate will finish its work by the end of June. What makes this legislative process of particular import is that last month the House of Representatives passed a version of the bill that would eliminate funding for political science research. (The provision was offered by Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) who said the provision was “oriented toward ensuring, at the least, that the NSF does not waste taxpayer dollars on a meritless program.”) And, just last week Washington Post columnist Charles Lane called for the elimination of all NSF funding for social science research.
We don’t want to be alarmist, but this situation seems pretty serious and is beginning to be something of a pattern. Recall that last year we saw similar threats to defund the entire Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) at NSF.
The American Sociological Association is urging its members to write their senators in support of social science research funded by NSF. (Click here for more information or see the text of sample letter below.) We usually try to keep politics and advocacy to a minimum here at TSP, but the one thing we are unabashedly advocates of is the value and social necessity of social science. No matter what you do or don’t do, and whether you are a professional social scientist, this is one issue to stay tuned to.
The ASA’s Sample Letter
As a sociologist and member of the American Sociological Association, I am deeply concerned about the National Science Foundation’s FY 2013 funding level and the implicit attack on scientific peer review. I urge you to provide robust funding for the Foundation and protect the integrity of the scientific enterprise that has benefited this country for so long.
Research funded by the National Science Foundation is a critical part of the research infrastructure in the United States, providing approximately 20% of all federally supported fundamental research conducted in America’s colleges and universities. NSF is the only federal agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering—including sociology, political science, and economics. The agency identifies the most promising ideas for advancing science through a rigorous and objective merit review process that uses independent scientific review panels.
The U.S. House recently voted to eliminate funding for all fundamental research in political science. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), “NSF political science research grants have contributed to important research on democratization, radicalization and terrorism, disaster response, and voting behavior.”
I urge you to oppose any efforts to eliminate funding for particular areas of science NSF’s when the appropriations bill reaches the Senate floor. In addition, I urge you to encourage your colleagues to restore funding to political science programs when NSF’s appropriations bill moves to conference committee.
NSF-funded research advances the frontiers of knowledge that keep the United States safe and competitive. In addition its research provides our nation with an understanding of humans and human behavior, which is used as a foundation for all successful technologies.
Please vote to protect the integrity of the scientific process by ensuring that NSF’s independent expert panels determine the best scientific ideas. I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
We talk a lot about the public value of social scientific research, but sometimes it seems we’re either preaching to the choir or our sermons are falling on deaf ears. Perhaps what we really need is ongoing dialog and debate between the true believers and the skeptics. For a piece that could help push toward that kind of exchange, check out this recent New York Times “Opinionator” piece from Gary Gutting, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame.
As the title suggests, Gutting’s piece poses the question of how reliable social scientific research is when it comes to informing real-world, public policy. Not as much as we might think or wish. Part of the problem is that we often fail to distinguish between early, preliminary tests and more definitive studies. Far more problematic is that fact that the knowledge and information in the social sciences is not as reliable as we might hope. Worse, prediction is where the social sciences really struggle. At the root of our inability to guide and predict from our research, according to Gutting, is the fact that the social world is so complex it doesn’t lend itself to the kind of randomized, controlled experimentation that is the hallmark of so much of the best research in the natural and physical sciences.
These ideas are inspired and informed by a new book called Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society by Jim Manzi. While I haven’t read the book yet (and am a bit skeptical about trying to imitate the natural science model), I’m especially interested to see what my editorial partner Chris Uggen thinks. Chris is, after all, constantly pushing the value of controlled and/or randomized experiments in our field.
Anyway, since that is to come, I’ll give the last word for the moment, to Gutting, in the hope that it will be the first step to further reflection and exchange:
My conclusion is not that our policy discussions should simply ignore social scientific research. We should, as Manzi himself proposes, find ways of injecting more experimental data into government decisions. But above all, we need to develop a much better sense of the severely limited reliability of social scientific results. Media reports of research should pay far more attention to these limitations, and scientists reporting the results need to emphasize what they don’t show as much as what they do.
