{"title":"Popularization and Consilience","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"Social science makes its way into public debate, raising concerns about publicity-seeking scholarship but also opening up potential benefits for engagement across disciplines and society. Social science debates are no longer, if they ever were, confined to universities and obscure journals; they are now central parts of popular media and political debate. Associated scholarly motivations for public influence drive research, then popular discussion of research findings feeds back into scholarship. The increasing role of media attention, popular nonfiction, and think tanks changes the incentives and the practices of social scientists. Popularized scholarship not only (mis)informs the public and policymakers, but also shapes interdisciplinary debates. This enables integration by concentrating diverse minds on public concerns. Sociobiology shows that scholars with very different views of human nature have put forward popular accounts, responded to one another, and created an ongoing space for advancing knowledge.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128891037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Universities as Settings","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"The specific institution where social science is most practiced, academia in the United States, creates biases and opportunities. Social science is slowly internationalizing, with more cross-national collaboration. Yet the American university system still accounts for a large share of social science and is the primary home for debates about its future. Despite constant claims of crisis, US universities are a stable and competitive global industry. Social science is doing well within American universities and expanding globally, but often doing so by enlarging applied rather than basic fields. Most research takes place in the current academic context, requiring attention to the recent history and incentives of universities. Cold War social science provides a window into related biases and successful efforts to overcome them.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"23 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133173531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Me-Search All the Way Down","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"The most commonly cited distinct difficulty of social science compared to science in general is that researchers are studying ourselves. But most thinkers have evolved toward a contemporary scientific realism on this point: there are biases, but they can be managed with close attention. Beyond perennial difficulties of self-knowledge, scholars tend to study their own time period, countries, and social groups, introducing additional biases while enabling research on how they affect our questions, methods, and interpretations. This often leads to accusations of “me-search,” especially by underrepresented minorities. But many of the same considerations that drive those critiques and their responses apply to scholars studying their own countries and time periods, and to all of us studying our own species. I argue that the successful history of racial and gender studies shows that progress requires acknowledgment of biases and diversification of viewpoints.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133505096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Open Science Reform and Social Science Progress","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Social science reform focused on research documenting problems of replication and proposed open science practices. The associated debates have drawn attention to the many biases involved in research and to the misaligned professional incentives that perpetuate them. The reform efforts have made considerable progress quickly, in self-understanding and even in changing research practices. Where it has gone too far in emphasizing experimental methodologies for testing of causal hypotheses, reformers and critics alike have promoted procedures that reflect social science diversity and acknowledge the importance of self-conscious exploratory work. In the process, several social science revolutions have made shared progress more likely: middle-range empiricism has risen over grand theory; open and big data has stimulated new work while enabling cross-checking; new causal identification strategies have enabled observational work to speak to experimental concerns; and the rise of team science has forced us to reconcile theoretical perspectives and build on individual strengths.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130002688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Opportunities and Constraints of the Disciplines","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Our disciplinary structure places constraints on research, but interdisciplinarity also creates challenges. The basic social science disciplines—political science, economics, sociology, psychology, and anthropology—each tend toward a particular view of human nature and have disciplinary prejudices regarding topics and methods. Interdisciplinary work has identified these differences and worked toward integration, especially in common applied fields, such as education and public policy. Each discipline’s historical inheritance shapes contemporary practice. Rather than dismantling or reformulation of disciplines, strong and self-aware disciplines with scholarly exchange among them have advanced theory and empirical analysis.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132664074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Motivations of a Practical Orientation","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"The basic social sciences did not develop independently and later seek application; the practical motivations that animate scholarly chronologies are inescapable. Historical investigations also show plenty of distasteful origins, including the consistent role of American social science in eugenics. That matters not just for how we interpret the past, but also how we address the motivations driving us today. It is easier to see how the racist impulses of the past drove misinterpretations of evidence and poor design—but that epiphany enables a review of how our own motivations (new and perennial) continue to bias research. From finance to information technology, the rising industries of today are built on social science but tempted by triumphalism. Scholars are driven by proving our studies useful—in ways that can both uphold existing institutions and transform them. An acknowledgment of our evolving social, economic, and political goals can help address scholarly biases.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121093734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Multiple Levels of Analysis and Time Scales","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Explanations for human behavior often involve factors operating at multiple levels of analysis (from individuals to organizations to nations) and across different time scales (immediate, developmental, and evolutionary). Continuing debates over methodological individualism within the social sciences ignore the growing consensus within philosophy of social science that influences on social life are present across individual and collective units, each with influential histories. Even if models of individual interaction offer useful templates, they do not imply that any social process started anew at any particular point in time or that individuals created social structures without being influenced by prior institutions. Using a comparison of traffic and weather, I find that these difficulties are no worse for social than natural science, once we welcome both simple patterns and complex multilevel processes. In both cases, much progress is made simply through observational generalization and many complaints involve our ability to change the world, not understand it.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121286596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"All History and Policy","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Social science originated in the study of history and the desire to inform collective decisions, with often contentious efforts by budding social scientists to separate themselves in organization and status from historians and social reformers. Despite active distancing from this inheritance, social scientists are still limited by both the variation available from human history and the usefulness of our findings in policy. We are all searching for patterns across the times we can observe and subject to the goals of our societies. Since the contemporary context affects our questions and interpretations, we can acknowledge our reformist impulses as well as learn from historians’ approaches to counteracting presentism. We erred in thinking of our enterprise as fundamentally distinct: social scientists should accept our role in systematizing history and informing policy debate, rather than seek to replace either.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126189582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social Science Biases and Collective Knowledge","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding, investigating, and adapting to the biases inherent in social science research is the best path toward accumulating and advancing social science knowledge. Social science faces many categories of bias, from those stemming from unrepresentative researcher demographics to those based on research practices and incentives. Each has implications for research practices, but none makes social science impossible. Scholars face inherent challenges larger than those of natural scientists, with more disagreement on the most important biases to address and the kinds of research necessary to do so. But there are important advances in scholars’ self-understanding that can serve as the basis for our future progress.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129101113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Quiet Resolution of the Science Wars","authors":"Matt Grossmann","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"The “science wars” were resolved surprisingly quietly. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, critics of science from humanities disciplines fought with scientists over the extent to which science is a social and biased process or a path to truth. Today, there are few absolute relativists or adherents of scientific purity and far more acknowledgment that science involves biased truth-seeking. Continuing (but less vicious) wars over Bayesian and frequentist statistics likewise ignore some key agreements: tests of scientific claims require clarifying assumptions and some way to account for confirmation bias, either by building it into the model or by establishing more severe tests for the sufficiency of evidence. This sedation was accompanied by shifts within social science disciplines. Debates over both simplistic models of human nature (especially over rational choice theory) and over what constituted proper quantitative and qualitative methods died down as nearly everyone became theoretically and methodologically pluralist in practice. I herald this evolution, pointing to its benefits in the topics we cover, the ideas we consider, the evidence we generate, and how we evaluate and integrate our knowledge.","PeriodicalId":198266,"journal":{"name":"How Social Science Got Better","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116695209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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