Risks of Research

The force of law in most cases protects the confidential nature of communications between lawyer and client, psychiatrist and patient, pastor and penitent (see RELIGION). Yet scientists studying antisocial or abnormal human behavior have no such protection, and are wide open to arrest for participating in illegal activities or concealing information about them. The result, many of them claim, is that little meaningful research is being done in the field of what sociologists call "deviant behavior."

The perils of this work were recently exemplified by the dilemma that faced California Sociologist Lewis Yablonsky, whose books on teen-age gang life in New York (The Violent Gang) and the Synanon cure for drug addiction (Synanon: The Tunnel Back) have been widely praised for telling it like it is. Yablonsky could tell it, because he lived with the people he studied--and his classroom presentation at San Fernando Valley State College this month earned him an "outstanding teacher" award over 9,000 of his colleagues in the California state colleges. Shortly before he won the award, however, Yablonsky--who is now studying the hippie movement--was subpoenaed to testify at the marijuana trial of a friendly flower child. On the stand, Yablonsky pleaded possible self-incrimination and refused to answer nine questions aimed at discovering whether he had observed anyone smoking pot.

Invaluable Trip. "Of course I had," Yablonsky conceded out of court. "But I took the Fifth because I didn't want to go to jail. I feel very strongly that a sociologist should be able to study a social problem without fear of being guilty of illegal behavior." In his book on tne hippies, to be published in March, Yablonsky not only admits that he observed drug use and sales, but describes his own experiment with marijuana and a harrowing LSD trip he and his wife took together--all illegal activities. The trip, Yablonsky contends, gave him "invaluable perspective" on the drug. Throughout his research, Yablonsky says, he found the possibility of arrest or being forced to reveal sources a "constant source of concern, anxiety and fear." It caused him to turn down an offer to meet "the biggest pusher in California." While such an interview might have aided his sociological insights, he figured that the need to keep the man's identity secret presented an insuperable scholarly dilemma. In the past, he has been bothered by revelations of unpunished crimes turned up in group-therapy work among prison inmates and addicts, finally decided not to report them.

Harvard Psychiatrist Norman Zin-berg contends that legal complications have "virtually stopped LSD research dead" and have hindered much-needed studies on homosexuality and abortion. Sociologist Kenneth Whittemore of Georgia State College takes elaborate precautions in his studies of suicide prevention, venereal disease, prostitution, abortion and homosexuality, even though most of it is done on government grants. When he studies abortion in one state, for example, he keeps his files in another so they will be harder to subpoena. He hires coeds to interview prostitutes, gives them $50 to carry for bail in case they are caught in a raid. Whittemore's contracts permit him to pay sexual deviants for their help, but he refuses to name them on his tax returns--and IRS agents keep quizzing him about the anonymous deductions.

High-Flying Youths. Also worried about arrests is a group of doctors and nurses compiling invaluable data on drug effects at a free clinic in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury hippieland. They continually receive high-flying youths still carrying drugs but do not report them, since none of the hippies would ever again seek their help if they did. Clinic Director David Smith, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, concedes that he risks his doctor's license every day but insists that his work "is something that has to be done--and I'm going to do it."

To free the social scientist, Yablonsky argues, states should either pass laws granting immunity against prosecution to qualified researchers or allow attorney generals to grant immunity for specific projects. Some sociologists, on the other hand, fear that such laws would bring closer supervision by courts and police, might provide protection for unethical, nonacademic "researchers" seeking thrills. The best solution, argues Sociologist Fred Crawford of Emory University, is for the social scientist to build a reputation for reliable research and to simply accept the risks involved--even if it means going to jail to protect the privacy of individuals who had made his studies possible.

*He vows never to take LSD again, opposes hallucinogenic drugs on medical, mental and legal grounds: "I find reality stimulating and interesting--I am against any artificial stimulants that foul up the emotions."

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