Nor is that all: you can spend an entire quarter debating the difference between a "hypothetical construct" and an "intervening variable," a subject worth perhaps five minutes; you can learn a jargon designed to make your conversation incomprehensible, and which serves no purpose other than to see that someone from another discipline will be discouraged from trying his hand; and when it's all finished you are qualified to do what?
What indeed? What is a person with an undergraduate degree in psychology capable of doing? And psych is the tough one; if a B.S. in psychology is aptly named, what are we to make of sociology?
But maybe it's all just as well. Do you really
want
social science? Let me illustrate.
Probably the most controversial subject in the field involves IQ tests. What, if anything, do they mean? And since most IQ tests show a statistical difference between the races, shouldn't their use be forbidden? (Some courts have forbidden their use in university entry decisions for precisely that reason.)
And my Lord, the arguments that can develop! Nature versus nurture. Heredity versus environment. I listened to a paper on the subject presented by a Harvard professor at an AAAS meeting a couple of years ago, and by Roscoe the debate hasn't moved an inch since my undergraduate days.
Yet it wouldn't be hard to settle, would it? Not if the answer really were wanted.
When I took social sciences seriously, one experiment reported in the Tests and Measurement courses seemed really elegant: the twin studies. It's a simple experimental design. First locate a number of pairs of twins. What you want is identical twins reared together; identical twins reared apart; fraternal twins reared together; and fraternal twins reared apart. Those reared together shared roughly the same environment; while identical twins have identical heredity, unlike fraternal twins who are no more closely related than any other siblings. Go find a number in each category; not easy, but not so very difficult in this era of forms and dossiers.
Give them a number of tests. Ideally test everyone in their class at school, or job category at work, so that your subjects don't know they've been singled out. Then compare the results. What you're looking for is not absolute IQ, whatever that means, but point spread between pairs.
My Differential Psychology text reported such an experiment, and lo! the results were unambiguous. The least difference between pairs was identical reared together, as you'd expect; but then came identical reared apart, not fraternal together—suggesting strongly that heredity was more important than environment in determining what was being measured by the IQ tests.
I'm told that the classic experiment reported in my book was in error; that some of the data may have been fudged. Okay. That's possible. But instead of long debates with anecdotes, and speculations on whether those data were fudged, why not go do it again?
While we're at it, why not develop a really good grade prediction program? The computers exist. Lord knows there's enough money spent on tests. And there must be IQ data on millions of graduates of tax-supported institutions; that can be followed up to see if all that testing is worth anything. If it is, fine, use it to save time and effort and money; if not, fine again, abolish the silly tests; but what we actually do is ridiculous.
Maybe we don't want successful prediction? Might good predictions of academic success have a baleful effect on the republic?
Aha. We're now in the realm of political "science", which once a long time ago meant the study of political philosophy and involved a great deal of history; nowadays the rage is "behavior", meaning that what was faddish in psychology twenty years ago has now caught on in poly sci; with about the same utility. Not that all political science courses are a waste of time; there's considerable value in discovering that most of the ideas and movements and problems we think are unique to our age have cropped up again and again in other times and places. One can also learn something about statesmanship and diplomacy, and even a bit about how to win an election. But there's damned little science in it.
There's sometimes not even common sense. Take the business about a political "left" and "right". It's easy to prove it's nonsense. There's absolutely no variable underlying that "spectrum"; indeed, I pretty well proved in my dissertation that it takes at least two variables at right angles to each other to map even the broadest political groupings each to a unique point. The whole idea of a "left" and "right" is nonsense—but it's still with us, and it has important consequences in the very real world. What in the world do British labor unions have in common with Soviet communism other than the vague feeling that both are "the left"? Are the Czechs better off under Soviet occupation than they were under the Nazis? Of all the stupid notions in academia, the "left-right" model of politics is demonstrably among the silliest; to flog an already-used example, it's as if the chemistry department allowed the rest of the faculty to act as if they believed in phlogiston. If political science can't manage even to stamp out that nonsensical notion, what can it do?
And that at last brings me to the point of this polemic.
There isn't any "social science." None. There are no experts, not in the same sense in which one can be an expert in physics, or chemistry. To the extent that science fiction has encouraged the notion that a science of human behavior exists, we have harmed the world.
We can survive the sociologists. We may even be able to survive the psychologists. The political scientists are a bit more dangerous, but they don't have all that much power: mostly I think of good they could do (like using freshman poly sci to dispel some of the nearly-universal nonsense) and sigh over the waste.
Economists are another matter.
"It ain't what we don't know that hurts us, it's what we know for certain that ain't so."
The economists think they know. And between them and the lawyers, they run the country.
Hope springs eternal. Even after discovering that the useful content of academic psychology can be learned in under a year, and that political science, while enlightening and valuable for intellectual stimulation, was less scientific than psychology, I still yearned for Hari Seldon's laws. Perhaps economics? Economists at least say they're scientific. Grad students in economics talk about input-output models, aggregate economic analyses, "fine tuning" the economy; even in my day, they had complex equations systems which, once they had computers, they could solve . . .
Alas, it's worse there than elsewhere. Look at some of those splendid computer models—and look at the results. They don't predict a damned thing. Hell's bells, as I write this they're wondering whether we're in a recession or not! Now sure, economists can
explain
everything after it's happened—but so can any of the social sciences. And the trouble with acting as if economists have some special knowledge is that they get in the way of common sense.
Look: it doesn't take much genius to see that minimum wages cause unemployment of the unskilled. You wouldn't hire at three dollars an hour someone capable of doing only two dollars' worth of work; why think anyone else will? Now sure, politicians might act cynically: raise the minimum wage, and count on inflation to negate the effect; but that's not science.
It's not a lot harder to see that high taxes encourage people to spend rather than save; if you want to curb inflation, reduce the tax rate.
They give Nobel Prizes in economics. The award is political, of course; people with diametrically opposite views have won it. If one's right, the other must be wrong. Or they both are.
The theory of state-supported education is that it's an investment in the future. The future citizens should have intelligent opinions and useful skills.
Some think this is the most important investment we can make.
So who allocates this most important investment? Why, the people objectively least qualified to do so, of course: incoming freshmen. Department budgets are closely correlated with number of majors. Thus we have a kind of oriental bazaar, with each department trying to woo as many of the frosh as possible. Each also wants to have one or more courses required for graduation; that too boosts enrollment and thus budget.
There's another way.
Wouldn't it make more sense to subsidize departments in proportion to the republic's need for their graduates? And while we're at it, to use our new powerful computers to generate really good predictions of success in the field? Now true, that would mean some students wouldn't get into the department of their first choice; at least not at public expense. But is that any worse than the present situation, which looks like a bad parody of manpower allocation?
Over five years ago I was asked to testify to a legislative committee investigating diminishing resources; at the time I said the most critical diminishing resource was trained talent. I've had no reason to change my opinion.
In the 50's we thought it shameful that almost 20% of our population was in some degree illiterate. We debated what to do about it. The social scientists promised that all it would take was some Federal Aid to Education; a couple of billion dollars would solve the problem nicely.
Three years ago we lamented our 30% functional illiteracy. Now we have a Department of Education. When do we reach 50%? Anyone want to bet we won't?
Mrs. Pournelle is a reading specialist; her students are illiterate teen-agers, many of whom have thick files proving "scientifically" that they can't possibly learn to read. They've "got dyslexia" (which translates to "reading difficulties;" reminds me of my friend who was much relieved when the physician told him his lower backache was lumbago). She tips the files into the waste can and teaches the kids to read. She is also required by law to take various university classes on how to do her job; thus I'm exposed to the journals and textbooks, and they are simply unbelievable. What passes for research would be laughable if it didn't cost so much—and so thoroughly affect people's lives.
So what's to be done about it? I don't know. My agreement with Baen entitles me to an occasional tirade, and this has been it. Years ago E. C. Banfield said, "The existence of a body of nonsense which is treated as if it were a grand principle ought not be regarded by reasonable critics as equivalent to a grand principle," and I'd like to think I could persuade some of the more honest academicians to take that seriously.
Because it is serious.
We have big computers now. We have analytical tools which might, just might, allow some real science in the social sciences. Hari Seldon's psycho-history probably isn't possible; but something short of it may yet be developed by people trained in scientific method and equipped with modern tools; who know something of computer science and the capabilities of both large and small machines, and also know enough mathematics to have something to program.
But that won't happen if we continue to insist that students learn the nonsense that fills today's social science texts. If they spend their time on nonsense they won't have time to learn anything else.
One reason Jim Baen keeps me around is that he likes to talk. We have endless telephone discussions of column topics, and they tend to spill over to anything else going on. In the course of one conversation we got to the subject of the Ayatollah Kockamamie, and Jim said something about "all ends of the political spectrum . . . er, points."
"Curious you should put it that way," I replied. "I wrote my dissertation in political science on a proof that the political spectrum has more than one dimension; that the old left-right category doesn't really work."
"Now there's a column," Jim said. And on reflection I agree. At least it makes a good appendix to my tirade on what's wrong with the social sciences.
The notion of a "left" and a "right" has been with us a long time. It originated in the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly during their revolution. The delegates marched into the Hall of Machines by traditional precedence, with the aristocrats and clergy entering first, then the wealthier bourgeois, and so on, with the aristocracy seated on the Speaker's right. Since the desire for radical change was pretty well inversely proportionate to wealth, there really was, for a short time, a legitimate political spectrum running from right to left, and the concept of left and right made sense.
Within a year it was invalidated by events. New alliances were formed. Those who wanted no revolutionary changes at all were expelled (or executed). There came a new alignment called "The Mountain" (from their habit of sitting together in the higher tiers of seats). Even for 18th Century France the "left-right" model ceased to have any theoretical validity.
Yet it is with us yet; and it produces political absurdities. No one can possibly define what variable underlies the "left-right" continuum today. Is it "satisfaction with existing affairs?" Then why are reactionaries, who most definitely want fundamental changes in the system, called "right wing"? Worse, the left-right model puts Fascism and Communism at opposite ends—yet those two have many similarities. Both reject personal freedom. Some would say they are more similar than different.
What are we to make of Objectivists and the radical libertarians? They've been called "right wing anarchists," which is plain silly, a total contradiction in terms.
Nor is this all academic trivia. "There is no enemy to the Left" is a slogan taken very seriously by many intellectuals. "Popular Front" movements uniting "the Left" (generally socialists and communists) have changed the destinies of nations. Conservatives swallow hard and treat kindly other members of "the Right" even when the others seem despicable by Conservative standards. The left-right model, although nonsensical by any theoretical analysis, has had very real political consequences.
Some years ago I set out to replace the old model with one that made more sense. I studied a number of political philosophies and tried to see what underlying concepts separated them from their political enemies. Eventually I came up with two variables. I didn't then and don't now suggest these two are all there is to political theory. I'm certain there are other important ones. But my two have this property: they map every major political philosophy and movement onto one unique place.