We don’t care. 😂 we know that gays and lesbians don’t like us. Y’all do y’all. And we’ll do us.

visit our website at www.spssi.org and click the join button. you can also call the office to speak with someone about membership. 202-675-6956

Thanks for your comments, Lee. I don't disagree that science *can be* partisan; I argue (more narrowly) that it *need not* be partisan. That is, science is not of necessity partisan, where the term "partisan" is more narrowly defined as relating to a particular political party. I think it's undeniable that our biases-- whether implicit and explicit-- affect what research we choose to conduct, how we conduct that research, and even how we interpret that research. In that way, I would agree with you that social science is not purely "objective," and does not lead to finding the Truth. When I said that science "need not" be partisan, I meant that science does not have to be co-opted as singularly valuable to one particular political party. This includes the social sciences. Indeed, in the UK, it was Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron who championed the integration of behavioral sciences into better government functioning (see www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/business/international/britains-ministry-of-nudges.html). Despite the impossibility of pure objectivity, social sciences have much to contribute to progress. If we think of our discipline as contributing to the accumulation of hard and objective facts, then we're (probably) doomed. But if instead we think of the social sciences (at their best) as offering competing descriptive and causal explanations for social phenomena, then we're on better ground. Philosophers like Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty have written about progress as emerging from competition between frequently incommensurable, subjective perspectives. I agree with them. Last, I think that social scientists who espouse a particular cause play an important role in human progress. For example, my research interests are fundamentally shaped by my commitment to social justice issues for survivors of interpersonal and political violence. If I weren't motivated in this way, I wouldn't pursue this research at all. And I wouldn't have anything to contribute to the competition of perspectives critical to progress. This is true for every social scientist, whatever his or her animating cause (and whether more prototypically liberal or conservative). MLK was right to exhort social scientists to pay attention and respond to the environment around them. But "social science" is larger than any individual social scientist. Social science ideally moves toward progress through creating a space for respectful and informed competition among perspectives. I know that this doesn't always occur in reality. The response from the other side should not be to duck out of competition altogether, or to malign social science as a whole. Like Jonathan Haidt, I hope that we as social scientists can improve in our capacity not just to tolerate, but to encourage and engage with dissent.

Well, we agree that science is not necessarily partisan. I see you (or someone) changed the title of the video from "Science is Not Partisan" to "The Social Sciences Contribute to Progress." The tendency of (many) scientists to arrogate to themselves unjustified claims of superiority strikes me as about as problematic as the rejection of well-justified claims by the lay public, whether for partisan, religious, or any other reasons. The new title here is definitely an improvement, but let me ask you a question. What would you say are the 3 greatest direct contributions of social science to "progress" (whatever that means), say, since 1967 (last 50 years)? And please do not give me examples of laws or public policies, because those are legal changes, at best indirect results of social science work being used as rhetorical fodder to make legal arguments. (E.g., the 1990 Hopkins Brief was a masterpiece of cherrypicking, confirmation bias, questionable interpretive practices, and, at times, even making sh*t up out of whole cloth -- key example: It's claims that stereotypes are either inaccurate or do not apply to individuals). But I digress. Consider, e.g., the engineering marvels of the last 50 years (computers, smart phones, cars that last 200,000 miles, solar panels, etc.) which required no legal or policy changes to create (I am not arguing policy is not relevant, but "policy" did not invent smartphones or solar panels). What are three concrete examples of "progress" (however you define that), social examples comparable to the invention of smartphones or solar panels, that were directly created by social science? (I am tempted to give a long and snarky list of the AMAZING! effects "discovered" by social psychology over the last 50 years that have been demonstrated to range somewhere between wildly overstated and completely bogus, but: 1. I have already done that elsewhere: www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201610/what-is-wrong-social-psychological-science www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201606/hard-truths-and-half-truths-about-race-campus-part-iii www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201602/are-most-published-social-psychology-findings-false www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201512/is-stereotype-threat-overcooked-overstated-and-oversold and 2. It would be a snarky way to end this missive to you, and my question is sincere, not snarky. Lee