Rising from the ashes of the Second World War, the United States government believed that scientific research was the key to national prosperity and security. Hence, their establishment in 1950 of the National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent agency which to this day remains a major funder of basic research in the country.
Within a decade or so, the new agency had established itself as a respected and important source of support for first-rate, academically-oriented research in sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology.
Social science, however, met with a more muted reception. Although psychologists, economists and anthropologists had also made essential contributions to the war effort, their work was thought by some politicians and NSF's leaders to be overly biased and subjective when compared to that of natural scientists.
That historical mistrust of social science continues to this day, and is the basis of Mark Solovey’s latest book. Entitled Social Science for What?: Battles Over Public Funding for the ‘’Other Sciences’’ at the National Science Foundation, the book argues that when it comes to funding for academically oriented research, American social scientists have been more dependent for the NSF than their counterparts in natural science — the latter also find strong support from other science patrons. Yet, at the NSF the social sciences have had to contend with a lesser degree of respect over many decades due to critical attitudes to their work. Consequently, this dependency has hurt their profession in distinctive ways.
Early in the Cold War era, “social sciences were criticized for not being really scientific — for being ideological and political in ways that may seem to have been disguised as science,” says Solovey, professor in the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology.
At the time, “there was animosity in the U.S. towards socialism and communism. This caused a lot of problems for social scientists and their supporters, who argued for a science of society which was separate from ideology and politics”— though they were also pressed about the social relevance of their work, regarding problems such as racism, income inequality, and crime, and threats to democracy.
Solovey has long studied the development of the social sciences in the U.S. In the case of the NSF, he says, support for them has always been hampered by “scientism”: the perception that natural science, governed by immutable laws and grounded in rigorous methods of inquiry, existed on a more elevated plane that the social sciences needed to emulate.
When the NSF was established, its founders had to decide: is there such a thing as a social science and if so, how would we know if we see it? Certain areas of research have been institutionalized, such as sociology, economics, anthropology, political science. Psychology has areas that are more social, others that are more biological. There have always been boundary disputes.
Like natural scientists, social scientists are concerned with evidence-based research and use both quantitative and qualitative tools to arrive at conclusions. But they are uniquely concerned with human society and social relationships, which themselves are entangled with normative judgments and morality.
“When the NSF was established, its founders had to decide: is there such a thing as a social science and if so, how would we know if we see it?” Solovey says. “Certain areas of research have been institutionalized, such as sociology, economics, anthropology, political science. Psychology has areas that are more social, others that are more biological. There have always been boundary disputes.”
Social science funding has only ever represented a small proportion of the NSF’s budget. “In the late 1950s social sciences represented maybe two per cent of the total,” says Solovey. “Then came the 1960s, which was a different era in U.S. society.”
At that point, social science then entered a kind of golden age due to its association with bold policy initiatives launched during the Democratic presidencies of John. F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Scientists helped to promote federal programs to tackle a wide array of problems, including, as Solovey writes, “juvenile delinquency, urban blight, racial conflict, poverty and unemployment.” Accordingly, by the late 1960s, the NSF allocated around seven per cent of its budget to social science — “the highest it’s ever reached,” Solovey says.
I would very much like American social scientists and people interested in the problem of funding to support a proposal for a National Social Science Foundation.
But in the 1970s, the pendulum swung back toward conservative mistrust. Liberals too expressed mistrust of some social science research, especially that which they saw as serving conservative economic or political ideals, practices, and policies.
Solovey’s book takes us to the end of the Reagan presidency and, in a short final chapter, up to the present day, leaving us with questions about the future of social science support in the U.S.
To this end, his book proposes a new funding agency for the social sciences in the U.S., a National Social Science Foundation, which would seek to support social research on a broad front by welcoming and promoting work grounded in humanistic as well as scientific approaches — perhaps along the lines of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
“This proposal already came up in the late 1960s when there was a fair bit of interest. Perhaps, for me, it’s the most interesting episode in the entire story: there was a proposal in Congress, there were national hearings, the Senate voted to support it. But it never got support in the House of Representatives. And by the late 1960s, the climate had changed and the whole idea disappeared. Since then, this idea has basically vanished.”
In their investigations of employment trends, poverty, political behaviour, human sexuality and so many other domains, Solovey notes that social scientists continue to rely on sources of public and private support. The contributions that they can make to society are all the more critical in times of global illness, war, and climate change.
Consequently, he says: “I would very much like American social scientists and people interested in the problem of funding to support a proposal for a National Social Science Foundation.”