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ing, that city-wide busing for school desegregation purposes caused white
flight. This had been vehemently denied prior to Coleman's research; far–
reaching social policies had been erected on the presumption that it was
not true. But, as we now know, Coleman was right. The "taboos
around the circulation of facts" then prevalent among American sociol–
ogists have had seriously deleterious consequences. Yet, when presenting
his work at the ASA meetings that year, the corridors outside of the
lecture hall, and the wall behind the podium from which Coleman had
to speak, were covered with posters displaying, along with his name and
the title of his talk, Nazi swastikas and other epithets suggesting that he
was a racist.
In
1985, when Richard Herrnstein and James
Q.
Wilson
tried to lecture on their important treatise
Crillle alld Hlllllall Natllre,
in
the shadow of Harvard University, they were drowned out by students
chanting, "Wilson, Herrnstein, you can't hide. You believe in genocide!"
Researchers identifYing with certain groups advocate approaches
to
their disciplines said to reflect their group's perspective - a feminist, or
black, or "gay" approach to history, sociology, economics, anthropol–
ogy, et cetera. This fragmentation (now well advanced and seemingly ir–
reversible, whatever one may think of it) is closely connected with the
fact that
pl/blic rhetoric in IIlnll)' areas of the social 5ciellce5 is s('if-collsciol/sly
IIlIdertakell as strategic political expressioll.
The disciplines are no longer in–
sular venues of discourse governed by internal norms of scholarly expres–
sion accepted by all who have been trained to do research in the field.
Social scientists not only address each other, they participate in a larger
discussion with extra-scientific implications. Perhaps it was ever thus,
though growth of the regulatory and welfare state, and the now greater
emphasis on cultural politics, have enlarged the extent
to
which scholarly
expression has political consequences.
The notion of "objective research" - on the employment effects of
the minimum wage, say, or the influence of maternal employment on
child development - can have no meaning if, when the results are re–
ported, other "scientists" are mainly concerned to pose the
ad hominem
query: "Just what kind of economist, sociologist, et cetera, would say
this?" Not only will investigators be induced
to
censor themselves, the
very way in which research is evaluated and consensus about "the facts" is
formed will be altered.
If
when a study yields an unpopular conclusion it
is subjected to greater scrutiny, and more effort is expended toward its
refutation, an obvious bias to "find what the community is looking for"
will have been introduced. The very way in which knowledge of the
world around us is constituted has become dependent upon the strategic
expression of ideologically motivated researchers.
These are matters of great seriousness, raising ethical as well as politi-
