Social Science Impact

"Today, statements such as 'We know no more about human psychology and politics than Aristotle did' mainly express the ignorance of those who utter them." So contend Harvard Government Professor Karl Deutsch, University of Michigan Biophysicist John Platt and Political Scientist Dieter Senghaas of Goethe University in Frankfurt. The three scholars recently completed a major study of creative achievements in the social sciences, which they summarized in Science magazine. Countering the lingering academic disdain for behavioral studies as either imprecise esoterica or common sense festooned with jargon, the authors make a convincing case that the breakthroughs in social science have been real, cumulative, and possessed of as much practical impact as discoveries in pure science and technology.

In effect, Deutsch and his colleagues used the techniques of social science to measure social science. Specifically, they performed an extensive statistical analysis of 62 major social science breakthroughs from 1900 to 1965. Included were such striking individual achievements as Weber's analyses of bureaucracy, Gandhi's ideas on nonviolent action, and Mao Tse-tung's theories of peasant and guerrilla organization, as well as concepts developed by scholarly teams: general systems analysis, cybernetics, ecosystem theories and structural linguistics. The researchers constructed their own criteria for inclusion on the list. One key question: Did the advance lead to further knowledge rather than merely having an impact on social science practice?

While individuals have been responsible for the largest number of breakthroughs since 1900, Deutsch and his associates concluded that "teams of social scientists seem likely to be the main source of major advances during the next decade," as they have been in the past 35 years. Supporting that contention was the parallel discovery that a handful of urban or university centers were responsible for a disproportionate number of the achievements. Chicago, Cambridge and New York accounted for one-half of all U.S. contributions. (Since 1930, the U.S. has been responsible for more than three-quarters of the breakthroughs on the list.) As a result, say Deutsch & Co., "locating a highly specialized social science enterprise at a small town or college, far away from all distractions, seems to be a very promising prescription for sterility."

Counters and Poets. The study also showed that the time lag between discovery and broad social or intellectual impact is constantly shrinking; it is now about ten to 15 years, a period similar to that for breakthroughs in technology. Insights into new patterns of behavior have become relatively rare. More common in recent years have been advances depending on such quantitative factors as survey research and large-scale tabulations, both of which require "major amounts of capital." Deutsch and his colleagues agree that "both types of scientific personalities, the quantifiers and the pattern-recognizers--the 'counters' and the 'poets'--will continue to be needed."

The authors--obviously counters--recommend that future research support be concentrated "in the form of ten-to-fifteen-year programs at clearly favorable locations." Though politicians prefer to spread research funds around, the study indicates that concentration would be more efficient. The researchers urge such increased efficiency in light of "a radical increase in the problems of coordination in all industrialized societies. To cope with this increase, it seems essential to produce an early and large increase in social science knowledge and its constructive applications."

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