It’s clearly very important that our governments are advised by smart social scientists who can do experiments and tell them whether law X or policy Y will decrease the crime rate or just annoy people, or we’re just letting politicians do whatever their ideology tells them to do.
Unfortunately, what is actually happening is that the politicians and beaurocrats decide which policy they prefer for ideological reasons and then fund social scientists willing to produce “science” to justify the desision.
I’m not sure this is necessarily always true. There are absolutely certainly instances of this happening, but more and more governments are adopting “evidence-led policy” policies, and I’d hope that at least sometimes those policies do what they say on the tin. The UK has this: https://www.gov.uk/what-works-network and I’m going to try and do more reading up on it to see whether it looks like it’s doing any good or just proving what people want it to prove.
It would certainly be preferable to live in a world where social scientists did good unbiased social science and then politicians listened to them. The question is, how do we change our current world into such a world? It certainly isn’t by disparaging social science or assigning it low prestige. We need to make it so that science>ideology in prestige terms, which will be really tricky.
There could be solutions to this, I’m sure, or at least ways of minimising the problems. Maybe an independent-from-current-ruling-party research institute that ran studies on all proposed laws/policies put forward by both the in-power and opposition power, which required pre-registration of studies, and then published its findings very publicly in an easy-for-public-to-read format? Then it would be very obvious which parties were saying the same things as the science and which were ignoring the science, and it would be hard for the parties to influence the social scientists to just get them to say what they want them to say.
There could be solutions to this, I’m sure, or at least ways of minimising the problems.
I’m sure there could be. It’s not an easy problem to solve—after all, right now, there are professors in social sciences, economics, and other subjects who can tell pretty quickly whether or not a given policy is at least vaguely sensible or not. But how often are they listened to?
Also, it’s not always easy to see which option is the best. If Policy A might or might not reduce crime but makes it look like everyone’s trying; Policy B will reduce crime but also reduce civil liberties; Policy C will reduce the amount of crime but increase its potential lethality… then how can one tell which policy is the best?
Having said that… there should be solutions. Your proposed institute is an improvement on the status quo, and would be a good thing to set up in many countries (assuming that they can be funded).
We need to make it so that science>ideology in prestige terms, which will be really tricky.
People tried this in the late 19th/early 20th century (look up “technocracy” if you want to learn more). That’s how we got into the mess we are in now.
My understanding is that the technocracy movement were more engineers than social scientists, and were not an influential movement anyway.
Anyway, the problem isn’t that scientists are inherently biased, its that if they mention certain hypotheses publicly they will be fired because of journalists.
Incidentally, I know neuro/cognitive scientists at a very left-wing university, and they believed in certain gender/racial cognitive differences, despite ideology.
Unfortunately, what is actually happening is that the politicians and beaurocrats decide which policy they prefer for ideological reasons and then fund social scientists willing to produce “science” to justify the desision.
I’m not sure this is necessarily always true. There are absolutely certainly instances of this happening, but more and more governments are adopting “evidence-led policy” policies, and I’d hope that at least sometimes those policies do what they say on the tin. The UK has this: https://www.gov.uk/what-works-network and I’m going to try and do more reading up on it to see whether it looks like it’s doing any good or just proving what people want it to prove.
It would certainly be preferable to live in a world where social scientists did good unbiased social science and then politicians listened to them. The question is, how do we change our current world into such a world? It certainly isn’t by disparaging social science or assigning it low prestige. We need to make it so that science>ideology in prestige terms, which will be really tricky.
Yes; you’ll get some politicians who actually want to reduce the crime rate and are willing to look for advice on how to do that effectively.
They’re hard to spot, because all politicians want to look like that sort of politician, leaving the genuine ones hidden in a crowd of lookalikes...
There could be solutions to this, I’m sure, or at least ways of minimising the problems. Maybe an independent-from-current-ruling-party research institute that ran studies on all proposed laws/policies put forward by both the in-power and opposition power, which required pre-registration of studies, and then published its findings very publicly in an easy-for-public-to-read format? Then it would be very obvious which parties were saying the same things as the science and which were ignoring the science, and it would be hard for the parties to influence the social scientists to just get them to say what they want them to say.
I’m sure there could be. It’s not an easy problem to solve—after all, right now, there are professors in social sciences, economics, and other subjects who can tell pretty quickly whether or not a given policy is at least vaguely sensible or not. But how often are they listened to?
Also, it’s not always easy to see which option is the best. If Policy A might or might not reduce crime but makes it look like everyone’s trying; Policy B will reduce crime but also reduce civil liberties; Policy C will reduce the amount of crime but increase its potential lethality… then how can one tell which policy is the best?
Having said that… there should be solutions. Your proposed institute is an improvement on the status quo, and would be a good thing to set up in many countries (assuming that they can be funded).
People tried this in the late 19th/early 20th century (look up “technocracy” if you want to learn more). That’s how we got into the mess we are in now.
My understanding is that the technocracy movement were more engineers than social scientists, and were not an influential movement anyway.
Anyway, the problem isn’t that scientists are inherently biased, its that if they mention certain hypotheses publicly they will be fired because of journalists.
Incidentally, I know neuro/cognitive scientists at a very left-wing university, and they believed in certain gender/racial cognitive differences, despite ideology.
The mess where we’re wealthier, living longer, etc?
The mess that what passes for “social science” is a bunch of BS.