Scientists who do research on policy issues arguably have an - TopicsExpress

Scientists who do research on policy issues arguably have an obligation to inform policymakers and the public about their research findings. But it is dangerous for science, policymaking, and the public’s trust in science when scientists are encouraged to do so only when the science supports liberal positions but are discouraged from doing so, or risk disapprobation from their colleagues, when the findings do not. Sadly, this is often the case. Scientists should go where the science takes them, not where their politics does. To attack a study based on the political incorrectness of its findings or its author’s and funder’s politics is scientifically irrelevant and ad hominem. Rather, studies must stand or fall on the weight of their methodological reliability and validity. Otherwise, as Notre Dame University Sociology Professor Christian Smith writes, “the very integrity of the social-science research process is threatened ... [we] cannot allow social-science scholarship to be policed and selectively punished by the forces of activist ideology and politics.”8 Making every effort to apply the same standards when scrutinizing studies that provide politically palatable results as when scrutinizing those that do not, and promoting rather than discouraging ideological diversity among researchers and their funders, are the best ways to ensure the integrity of science in the oft-politicized field of social science.