The challenge for reconceptualization.

Abstract

ITH CHARACTERISTIC scholarly perception a d breadth of perspective, Robin Room has provided a provocative paper on priorities in social science research on alcohol. By applying the historical framework of the_last third of a century to his analysis, and by viewing social science research on alcohol in the broader perspective of the social science and the alcohol problems fields generally, Room has helped pinpoint the parochial pitfalls that have prevented a more effective impact of alcohol research on social science perceptions and of social science research on alcohol problems and policies. As Room has pointed out, alcohol social science research in the last four decades has been heavily weighted with efforts to identify social causes of alcohol problems rather than the effects of such problems on society. Room believes that this may be due in part to the reluctance of the scientists entering the field in the 1940s to be identified with the temperance movement and its stress on the dire consequences of drinking. It should be remembered that the national prohibition experiment was still a recent experience in the 1940s and that people interested in alcohol problems were assumed to be either wet ...... or dry. It can also be noted that several prevailing biological scientific assumptions in the 1940s were diametrically opposite to claims of the temperance movement. For example, temperance messages emphasized that alcohol could have a direct deleterious effect on body organs; that it could damage the brain, stomach, liver, heart and fetus. Most scientists tended to reject the concept of direct damage and assumed that alcohol-related isease was due to nutritional deficiency, unhygienic living, or other concomitants of heavy drinking. In light of recent modifications of scientific thinking about the relationship between alcohol and organic disease and fetal damage, it is interesting to conjecture whether the need of scientists to dissociate from the temperance ideology and from