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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 2. A Methodological Note on Facts and Valuations in Social Science - 2. Methods of Mitigating Biases in Social Science
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An American Dilemma
1044
way, and openly to account for, the direction of theoretical research. It will further
be possible to cleanse the scientific work shop from concealed, but ever resurgent, dis-
torting valuations. Practical conclusions may thus be reached by rational inferences
from the data and the value premises. Only in this way does social engineering, as an
advanced branch of social research, become a rational discipline under full scientific
control.
The method of working with explicit value premises has a very evident advantage
in this last respect of laying a rational foundation for practical research. There are
only two means by which social scientists today avoid practical and political conclusions:
(l) neglecting to state the value premises which, nevertheless, are implied in the con-
clusions reached; (2) avoiding any rational and penetrating analysis of the practical
problems in terms of social engineering (which would too visibly distract from the
announced principles of being only factual). By the first restraint the doors are left
wide open for hidden biases. The second inhibition prevents the social scientist from
rendering to practical and political life the services of which he is capable.
Regarding the last point, social scientists have become accustomed to answer that
“very much more detailed factual research is necessary before wise action can be
planned upon the basis of scientific knowledge.” This statement, which, with few
verbal variations, will be found so often in our literature, is an expression of scientific
modesty. But it also expresses escape. From the point of view of the practical man and
of society, the rejoinder must be made: first, that practical action or inaction must be
decided from day to day and cannot wait until eventually a lagging social science has
collected enough detailed data for shouldering its part of the responsibility for social
action; second, that, even with much more money and exertion spent on research,
social science will, in this complicated and rapidly changing world, probably always
be able to present this same alibi; and, third, that the scientist—even if his knowledge
is only conjectural in certain respects—is in a position to assist in achieving a much
wiser judgment than the one which is actually allowed to guide public policy.
The third point is the decisive one. Without doubt we know quite enough in most
social problems to avoid a great number of wasteful mistakes in practical life and,
consequently, to have a better world. Even in science, although we may strive toward
the absolute, we must always be prepared to deliver the incomplete knowledge we have
on hand. We cannot plead that we must wait “until all the facts are in,” because we
know full well that all the facts will never be in. Nor can we argue that “the facts
speak for themselves” and leave it “to the politician and the citizen to draw the prac-
tical conclusions.” We know even better than the politician and the ordinary citizen
that the facts are much too complicated to speak an intelligible language by themselves.
They must be organized for practical purposes, that is, under relevant value premises.
And no one can do this more adequately than we ourselves.
There is a common belief that the type of practical research which involves rational
planning—^what we have ventured to call “social engineering”—is likely to be emo-
tional. This is a mistake. If the value premises are sufficiently, fully, and rationally
introduced, the planning of induced social change is no more emotional by itself
than the planning of a bridge or the taking of a census. Even prior to the stage
of social engineering proper, the research technique of accounting openly for one^s
value premises actually de-emotionalizes research. Emotion and irrationality in science,
on the contrary, acquire their high potency precisely when valuations are kept sup-
pressed or remain concealed in the so-called “facts.”
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