Beyond the Science-versus-Advocacy Distinction

Abstract

I have never felt very comfortable with discussions in which the choices offered were social scientists as advocates versus social scientists as disinterested and objective observers. The latter view seems naive and the former surrenders something important and essential to the social science project. Surely there must be a more useful way of thinking about issues of how social scientists should relate to the contests that surround public policy. When we add to the already muddy waters the complicated role of the mass media in this relationship, the need to step back seems to me even more compelling. I will attempt here to articulate an altemative way to understand how social scientists participate in a policy through the mass media. Then I will apply it to some of the examples used by Stacey and Rossi in this symposium, drawing some implications different from theirs.