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 Social Science
E.T. Barker, MD
"With regard to social science, it might seem overly provocative here to take a shot at that. Social science is really the only thing we've got -- how do you make sense of observations unless you follow the canons of social science? And I'm not trying to suggest anything else. But I am trying to suggest how misleading social science can be."
You will, though, run into the problem of social science research from vested interests. You see that in your attempts to reduce tobacco use. Very well-respected scientists on each side of the question will give you opposing results, and that's particularly true where a lot of money is at stake, as there is in violence in entertainment. You will simply get study after study after study that will befuddle you so that you won't do what seems to be common sense.
When I studied social psychology in graduate school, just one year, 30 years ago, the professor said that there is confusion between physical and social sciences. If we lost all our knowledge of the physical sciences, then we would be back to the cave days tomorrow. If we lost all knowledge we had from social sciences, then you wouldn't notice one thing different. I don't know if that's true or not, but it does put a kind of perspective on social science, as Seeley has said, as being perhaps only one notch better than propaganda. Social science is respectable and so on, but one must understand that social scientists can, with great sincerity and rigorous techniques, produce opposing results, given their own personal biases or who they're working for...
Excerpted from testimony by Dr. Barker at the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General relating to crime prevention. December, 1992.
"Social science is respectable and so on, but one must understand that social scientists can, with great sincerity and rigorous techniques, produce opposing results, given their own personal biases or who they're working for..."
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