Social Science for What? by Mark Solovey

Author:Mark Solovey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIT Press

CONCLUSION

The events of the 1970s took a worrisome turn. During the previous decade, growing federal science budgets together with a groundswell of liberal interest had supported modest although still significant expansion in NSF social science, including a new mandate to promote applied social research. Although growth in federal science budgets ended by the late 1960s, the new decade began with high hopes and a couple of promising initiatives, including MACOS and RANN. But by the mid-to-late 1970s, mounting discontent in the political arena, national science policy circles, and the broader society placed NSF social science on the defensive.

Three episodes in particular raised trouble. In the case of applied social research, an initial wave of optimism and significant funding gave way to critical assessments and chastened expectations in the nation’s political and scientific communities. As became clear through the Simon Report, disillusionment concerning the scientific quality and practical uses of RANN’s social research efforts spread, as did skepticism about the NSF’s ability to promote applied social science more generally. An NSF-commissioned study together with scholarship in the sociology of knowledge by Carol Weiss and others further undermined enthusiasm for applied social research and social engineering (although Weiss also argued that social science had practical value by providing a common discourse and conceptual language that enhanced the coherence of public policy discussions).

Meanwhile, from a somewhat different angle, Senator Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Awards focused critical scrutiny on the wisdom of spending hard-earned taxpayer dollars on particular research projects of questionable practical value. Not only did Proxmire bestow his unflattering award on a number of NSF-funded social science projects, such as anthropologist Sherry Ortner’s study of the Sherpas, but his criticisms also added to simmering political discontent that inspired plans to tighten congressional oversight of NSF grants and its peer-review system.

More trouble came from damning conservative criticism—at the local, state, and national levels—that portrayed MACOS as part of a dangerous plan to mold the young. Buttressed by the journalist Donald Lambro’s biting commentary about certain social science projects and NSF social science in general, discontent over MACOS contributed to conservative suspicions that a large segment of American social science, along with its advocates in federal agencies such as the NSF, promoted a host of bad things (i.e., moral relativism, secularism, and liberal social engineering).

Under those conditions, the NSF took some measures to rein in its troublesome programs. The agency shut down RANN. Although this did not end its mandate to support applied research, RANN’s closure did mean that the major source of NSF funding for social research relevant to national needs was gone, with no comparable replacement in sight. The agency also terminated funding for MACOS, thus bringing an end to the ambitious effort, begun in the early 1960s, to reform American grade school education based on advances in the modern social and behavioral sciences.

Although the worrisome events discussed so far are crucial for understanding the conflicted evolution of NSF social science during this period, we have only examined half of the story. This

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