The Coming Failure of Mission-Oriented Social Research

Abstract

There is a new fashion in social research among those who dispense the funds and those who guard the public treasure. The fashion is mission-orientation, a view that research should have a product and that this product should be closely related to the goals of the funding agency. By this approach, the spenders can be relieved of anxiety when congressional investigators question the utility of their research support. It is a pragmatic approach, an approach in terms of immediate problems and issues. All the research is relevant. This set of enterprises is going to spend several hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few years and it is likely to prove an excellent public-relations ploy and a large-scale failure. If the task is to satisfy the public and their representatives, mission-orientation will be successful for a while. Even that success is likely to be tem porary. Eventually, there will be questions about the improvement of social conditions which is expected to be the immediate outgrowth of the new applied knowledge available to our decision-makers. For the development of the social sciences, the hundreds of millions which will have been expended will be adding little to our knowledge base and much to public expectations. We'll be worse off when the high hopes of today will have been transmuted to deep disappoint ments. The lack of protest among social scientists as Government agen cies turn their research funds into rather than R & D is worthy of note. Unfortunately, social scientists are as unwilling as most humans to attack those who can sanction them. Social scientists may grumble, but they will be willing to accept tasks defined by persons