Politics, Science, and the Future of Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Leading research scientists and those who interpret science for a general readership (e.g., Trefil, 1996) are quick to acknowledge that science and politics are nearly always mixed, often legitimately, but that the relative influence of one on the other is often off kilter. In fact, observing the triumph of politics over science can be a highly frustrating, if not embittering, experience for researchers in the physical sciences as well as those who study social phenomena. Remember the Superconducting Supercollider? The SSC was supposed to be the next step in the quest to discover the ultimate nature of matter, a quest that began 2,000 years ago with the Greeks. In the largest high-tech construction program ever attempted, the SSC was going to occupy a fifty-two-mile circular tunnel under the plains south of Dallas. Unfortunately, Congress cut off funding for the project in 1993, and today the fourteen miles of completed tunnel are slowly filling with water, a monument to America's inability to focus on long-term goals. Now I don't want you to think I'm bitter about this. The fact that in my darkest hours I think one of humanity's noblest dreams was cut off by an alliance of political hacks and a few scientists whose level of bad judgment was exceeded only by the depth of their envy really shouldn't sway your thinking one way or the other. Whatever we think, the SSC is dead, and we have to turn to the question of what is going to happen in the foreseeable future. (Trefil, 1996, p. 47) We concur with the central message of the article by Kavale and Forness (this issue) that politics, perhaps best known as advocacy, has overwhelmed the science of learning disabilities and that many of the consequences have been disappointing to researchers, if not undesirable for children. We agree that advances in the field of learning disabilities will come only through careful, systematic, and persistent empirical research (Hallahan, Kauffman, & Lloyd, 1999). We may quibble about a statement here or there, but overall we find ourselves in substantial agreement that learning disabilities have come to mean something that is defined loosely and treated unsystematically, primarily on the basis of advocacy and expedience. Our best strategy now may be to recognize that the scientific vehicles for studying learning disabilities have been overtaken by politics and to focus our efforts on what to do next, just as Trefil (1996) acknowledged the death of the SSC and then shifted his attention to events in the foreseeable future. As Kavale and Forness are quick to recognize, politics cannot be divorced from learning disabilities; a proper or more desirable balance of science and politics is what might be achievable. However, the admixture that leads to the proper or most desirable balance is not immediately obvious, and we are probably well advised to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of various de-grees of tilt toward the scientific or political side.