I was fortunate to be attending the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education meeting at Ohio State University in the fall of 1988 when Dr. Lewis Judd, then director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), publicly announced the formation of the Task Force on Social Work Research. In his preannouncement remarks, Judd spoke of the need for social to join psychology and psychiatry as productive members of the community. From my vantage point in the audience, the reactions to this announcement ranged from What a wonderful thing NIMH is doing for social work to Who is this patronizing bureaucrat and what does he know about social work? Nevertheless, a 13-member task force was appointed and funded by NIMH to examine the current status of and training throughout the profession of social work (p. v) (italics in original). The results of the task force's three years of are described in a 108-page report entitled Building Social Work Knowledge for Effective Services and Policies. The report consists of six sections beginning with a discussion of the crisis in social and moving through education, productivity and careers, dissemination and utilization, support systems for research, and a plan for development. The lack of visible controversy surrounding the report's recommendations since its release in late 1991 has been surprising. In fact, few reports in recent years have been heralded as widely or have received such broad endorsement from virtually every major social organization. Admirers see the task force report as an important step toward revitalizing and further developing social as a scientifically based, effective profession that competes successfully for funding. The accolades that have greeted the release of the report also can be attributed to its mainstream, noncontroversial message: the need to provide resources for social research. It is hard to argue against a call for resources. Consistent with this more is position, the report focuses on documenting the lack of social and training. It uses these data to argue that social workers have yet to demonstrate either an ideological or a resource commitment to the furtherance of research. Conversely, the report avoids dealing with the vigorous, sometimes vociferous debate about the nature of social that has appeared in the literature for than a decade (for example, Brekke, 1986; Harrison, Hudson, & Thyer, 1992; Heineman, 1981; Witkin, 1991). Without awareness of this controversy, readers might assume that the nature of social is known and consensually approved. In addition, the report is virtually silent on why social is important and on what is vital or unique about the profession's approach to that makes it worthy of increased support. One could imagine a non-social worker reading this report and concluding that additional resources would be better spent in other, related professions that already have the commitment, the infrastructure, and the track record of productivity. Deconstructing the Task Force Report The broad charge given to the task force presented significant challenges. How the task force chose to fulfill this charge - the questions, topics, and methods emphasized and ignored - reveal its values about research. For instance, the basic value underlying the report (as well as the creation of the task force) is that is beneficial to the profession, and we ought to do of it. The only fly in this otherwise unassailable ointment is that the meaning of is never discussed. Thus, the reader is left to infer what it is that social workers should be doing of. Research Questions and Effectiveness In a highly technocratic society like that of the United States, scientific research is associated with the manipulation and control of nature. …