Policy Sciences 6 (1975), pp. 107-119 �9 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam--Printed in Scotland

Neutrality and Advocacy in Policy Research* H A R O L D O R L A N S

The National Academy of Public Administration Foundation, Washington, D.C. 20036

A B S T R A C T

The naive scientism which has dominated federal policy research and most policy research institutes has become a self-blinding dogma, an armchair philosophy which fabricates and distorts reality and has failed at its task of understanding our social and economic problems. Broader approaches are needed which do not artificially isolate and arbitrarily quantify selected factors but examine them in their social and historical context. The vain search for "objectivity" should be replaced by an honest avowal of the interests being served. The sanctimonious assertion of an undefinable "public interest" should be replaced by a definable fairness doctrine setting forth the status of the draft and final reports, project finances, and institute and sponsor controls. Such a doctrine could provide the basis for a new professional consensus and self-regulation in the policy research community, and for new IRS tax regulations governing nonprofit research institutions.

"Neutra l i ty" is not the same thing as "objectivity." I t may be that neither is, in any final or absolute sense, attainable; that both represent objects o f our occasional desire which we would not long sustain if we could, states o f intellectual peace at the still center o f the turning world.

Here, where the world is quiet, Here, where all trouble seems

Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams . . . . **

Despite the strange fantasy o f many intellectuals, the brain is not a bloodless organ. Engorged with blood, our higher center may not rise to the height o f the lower but ten minutes without blood and it is irreparably damaged. And just how much blood is necessary to normal life in each department and institution ? That could almost be shown on a color chart : red for sociology, purple for anthropology, gray for eco- nomics, pink at a liberal arts college, green at medical school: color political sdence

* A revised version of a paper given at the 1974 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, August 31, 1974.

** From "The Garden of Proserpine" by Algernon Charles Swinburne.

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as you wish. The fashion can change with time and age. Were not professors more relaxed and expressive in their writing 50 years ago--or were they merely more literate ? In the course of their career, many scholars have moved from disciplined work of narrow scope to broader, philosophical, more personal, and even auto- biographical writing as they seek to sum up the larger significance of their work, Graduate students and novitiates are denied the freedom their elders enjoy. They may talk but dare not write about personal and political motives: these are the stuff of gossip, of history, journalism, and private politics, not official social science.

As discipline can only conceal, not eradicate, disposition; it may, like the con- ventions of polite society, deceive the innocent. A profession which seeks the truth must consider whether silence about motives and restraint in expression serve, on balance, to enhance or suppress it.1 Honesty and truthfulness demand candor; modesty, charity, and prudence dictate restraint. To conceal a frail body of fact under elaborate vestments of theory and method is a mode not of restraint but of deception and self-deception; like a pagan ritual, it is no less false for being obligatory.

The debate over the limits of objectivity and the eliminability of bias, over the role of ideology, politics, and personal commitment in scholarship--the debate, it may be said, about the role of the human enterprise in the scholarly enterprise--will continue interminably though, no doubt, the votes cast on each side will vary with the precise formulation of the question, the nature of the forced choices, and, of course, just who is asking and answering the questions. Issues which have divided scholars for centuries will not be settled on this occasion.

So long as the debate continues, so long as rival facts, theories, and philosophies are counterposed, so long as the thrust of the center meets ripostes from the left and the right, we are tolerably well off. Nothing is more stultifying than an intellectual school--be it behaviorism or Keynesianism, Marxism or functionalism--enshrined as a dogma. The social sciences are too closely imbedded in social philosophy and social history, social action and social administration to function as natural sciences where a theory can be accepted by all and all can yet be free. A social science theory accepted by all--all citizens, officials, professors, or journal editors--becomes a dogma which reduces our freedom to conceive, to perceive, to tolerate, or to enact contravening facts. Social theory is too closely bound to our selective imagination and perception, to the complex interplay between what is proper, what is permissible, and what is possible for it to be otherwise. Influential social theories become unwitting instru- ments of social as well as intellectual order and dissent: the imagination is both freed and chained by its quantum of knowledge. How much freer we would be if we could only forget half of what we know.

Only simple people will find the human experience simple or adequately conveyed by the rotund homilies of the behavioral sciences. A more adequate hypothesis, amenable to empirical psychological testing, is that a disproportionate number of behaviorists are simple people or believe that others are no more complicated than they. If there is one human truth, all embracing, indivisible, unequivocal, and unchanging, it is not purchasable by tuition or research contract. The human community resembles a Portuguese man-of-war afloat in the seas of history, polymorphous, dangerous and endangered, mortal in part and in whole. Any member's field of vision is limited; none

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can see the colony, the interior, his neighbor or himself whole and entire; none can escape the hazards of the sea. To dissect the colony is to destroy it.

intellectual Turmoil and Lassitude Though the turmoil and rebellion on campus was highly disagreeable, its intellectual consequences have been invigorating. A greater variety, breadth, and fervor, even a little democracy and a modest concern with ethics, have been introduced into disciplines dominated by a self-blinding scientism. For a while, professional meetings became positively exciting.

While the academy suffered distress but gained in vitality, policy research institutes have prospered financially but suffered intellectually. Experiencing no rebellion and little protest, they have engaged in too little introspection (the academy may have engaged in too much). Manifest failure, acknowledged now even by some economists, has not ruffled their composure. Undisturbed by self-criticism, political dispute, ethical quandaries, or democratic pressures, institutes remain autocracies whose intellectual tolerance is coterminous with that of their sponsors and director. Their confidence in an empiricism untouched by history, a pragmatism untouched by ideology, and a politics untouched by passion persists despite all evidence and reason. Little seems to work well these days--the economy, the White House, the mails, the jails, the schools, garbage collection or economics, regulation or deregulation, competition or mono- poly, public or private services, computers or people. Yet they are confident that they can discover "what works" by surveys and multiple choice questions, models and cost- benefit analyses, interviews, arbitrary quantification, gaming, projections, the Delphi- not oracle but "technique," social "indicators" (not statistics), technology "assess- ment," and expensive social "experimentation." (Either the controls, and hence the findings, are a mockery or else, being real, they are inapplicable to real--i.e, uncon- trolled--conditions.) Their social "science" has become a chattering among apes, precisely recording unclear answers to unclear questions, forcing artificial choices, fabricating "hard" data from soft people. These "scientists" grow more confident of their data the more removed they are from their source in fallible human judgment. They are modern armchair philosophers. Their language sterilizes, romanticizes, or toys with reality. They misrepresent what they actually do and distort the reality they ostensibly seek. But many seek, rather, to dispel uncertainty: which is to say, to escape reality. In touching up dead data with false colors they function much like morticians.

We are variously affected by the events around us--by Mr. Nixon's lies, prices, the interviewer's bosom, unemployment, the weather, assassins and terrorists, a stuffed nose, the risks of war and of our city streets--but most of these are scrupulously disregarded by methodological purists whose "rigor" leads them to examine two factors and ignore the rest of reality.2 Others who also disregard reality are insti- tutionalized. The peoples and governments of many democracies are perilously divided, uncertain of their common purposes or direction: yet the "public interest" is confidently dispensed in every policy report.3 Fill a salt-cellar with numbers, sprinkle, and I0! another social problem is solved.

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How can it be that the more we spend on social research, the more social problems we seem to have ? No doubt, the incidence of social problems (should we ever agree on how to count them) reflects the state of society. But it is entirely unrelated to the incidence of social research as commonly practiced ? Admiral Rickover once refused to permit a study of submarine crews because, he said, it would only uncover problems. Before dismissing that as obscurantism, consider the truth in it and the conflict of interests in which we are placed, trying to decide if the admiral might possibly be right. To uncover a problem is not to invent or manufacture it but to dig it out of its resting place and display it for public examination. To change the setting of a problem can change its nature, just as the behavior of an animal is changed by exhibition in a cage.

The Indiscriminate Advocacy of Knowledge The operating assumption of social scientists, like that of journalists and gossips, is that exposure is good and more exposure, better; knowledge is always good and more knowledge, better: never tasteless, purposeless, or destructive. The assumption clashes sharply with the waning conventions of privacy. It is easier to increase the volume of information, to observe and record almost any event in almost any detail, than to use that information in any way: even to read, let alone retain or act upon it. Why then is every mound of information--of words and numbers, books and data banks, forms, print-outs, tapes, documents, and old fashioned handwriting, which fills our landscape like the formations in the South Dakota Badlands--why is all this unfathomable information "good"? It does not even make good mulch. It can be fascinating to scrutinize dead images of the past, but are we better off for those color pictures of a president's head lurching sideways and the questions surveyors were asking an hour later (it took them only half an hour, after Oswald's murder)? Whatever meaning events hold is buried beneath needless records, public posturing, and unformed answers to pointless questions. Between the journalists, the cameras, the social scientists, and participants avid for attention, we have lost our capacity for decent silence and half our power of natural action. Swing the klieg lights at the bedroom and the kitchen, at children and white mice, the toilet, the casket, the abattoir: let the truth blaze forth. No, the information yielded by social research is not all good: it insults, demeans, betrays, beclouds, and confounds as well as enlightens us.

The first form of advocacy with which social scientists may be charged, then, is the indiscriminate advocacy of knowledge. That is something like the advocacy of all vegetation including weeds, of all sound including noise, of all life including that which is mindless and debased. Monomanic empiricists might read the epilogue "In Dispraise of Life, Experience, and Reality" in Morris Raphael Cohen's Reason and Nature. 4 We do not need all knowledge but only that which is meaningful and, if we are not beyond hope, redemptive. Is that viewpoint sentimental? Is it wrong, is it an unacceptable bias for social science to be humane ?

In practice, the advocacy of knowledge becomes the advocacy by eaeh~professional school of its special brand of knowledge: econometricians advocate more econo- metrics, ethnologists more fieldwork, futurologists more forecasts, social surveyors more sample surveys, experimental psychologists more experiments, and so forth.

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Viewed from within a profession, this may seem inevitable; but, of course, the intel- lectual and methodological range of each profession reflects the prevailing conception of legitimate and fruitful scholarship. Any constriction or specialization in graduate school or subsequent practice reduces the professional man's ability to choose which among all possible approaches is most fruitful for a particular purpose. The choice of a research sponsor--let us say, the head of a foundation or governmental program-- though broader than that of an individual practitioner, is limited to the approaches deemed reputable and prudent by those whose judgments he must reckon with. When Boas and Kroeber dwelt upon cultural and historical factors, that represented a judg- ment of relevance, not their ignorance of statisticsfl Too many current research sponsors and investigators who disregard cultural and historical factors have made no comparable intellectual choice. They would rather blind us with numbers than enlighten us with words. The National Science Foundation supports policy research which is "scientific," not that which is most sensible or useful; many research agencies and institutes are still governed by professions (notably engineering and economics) installed in the days when simpler certitudes prevailed. It is not only in Europe that monarchies have outlived their usefulness.

The problems of scientific choice have been explored in Minerva; a comparable discussion has yet to be pursued in the social and policy sciences, e Needless to say, the likelihood of significant findings is not all that governs choice and what is "significant" is, in any event, more problematical and faddish in the social than the physical sciences. The constant succession of novel devices and phrases depicted as signs of progress weakens confidence in our good sense as social scientists and our ability to estimate correctly the modest value of our knowledge.

How would a panel of generalists assess the present allocation of policy research funds among social science disciplines and approaches ? The exercise is worth trying, though we may have to import panelists from India and Uganda. To my mind, present resources are grasped by the dead hand of the past; by a naive scientism; by the overly large study of overly narrow questions amputated from their social context; by a short- sighted pragmatism which yields short-lasting policies; and by too many gamesters, economists, engineers, and behaviorists whose technical virtuosity is matched by moral obliviousness and intellectual parochialism. They crawl through the canyons of history counting every grain in their path. Naturally they need more money to finish the count.

A searching examination of the intellectual assumptions, professional conventions, and institutional pressures in policy research and the substantive allocations and findings (if any) of particular programs is badly needed. That examination cannot be conducted realistically without an honest recognition of the institutional and political interests of the research enterprise itself and the limited immediate alternatives to present arrangements. It should not accept the axioms of academic research (such as the independence of the investigator and his freedom to publish) and apply them without question or modification to the policy milieu, since these axioms govern inquiry into generalized knowledge in the public domain, not particularized knowledge in private and semi-private domains.

I would like briefly to single out for attention several interrelated features of policy research--the presence of recommendations, the influence of the institutional setting,

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and the circulation of repor ts - -and to consider a few tests for determining whether the work is partisan. The tests are so simple I would apologize for mentioning them were it not for the frequent insistence that, as their purposes are "scientific," social scientists have somehow surmounted the thousand natural shocks that other flesh is heir to.

300 Recommendations a Day The most childishly simple way to determine if an investigation is partisan is to see if it offers any recommendations. To be sure, that is not the only way: the selection of evidence and even of words is just as revealing, since these do not choose themselves and each choice betrays the investigator's insight and opacity, his sympathies and animadversions, his character and social outlook. But recommendations put the matter baldly. They avow support of particular interests or of the general interest which everyone espouses and cannot agree upon.

The intellectual has traditionally been averse to making recommendations. His task is to determine the truth as best he can and the truth is compatible with every form of politics, ideology, religion, and morality under the sun which shines on Damascus as well as Tel Aviv, Dallas, the White House, Moscow, and Berchtesgaden. I t is difficult enough to decide what is true without having to decide what to do about it, and still more difficult to make a responsible recommendat ion--one which is neither idle nor impractical nor merely clever, fashionable, or politic but serious, the consequences of which one is prepared to defend with one's reputation, if not (because few recom- mendations would, then, ever be made) one's life.7

To offer a recommendation is, of course, a political act but it is also a gesture of allegiance: a sign that one has at least momentarily forsaken the ethereal world of scholarship for the carnal world of man, the prosaic world of foundation and govern- ment administrators or the fanciful world of reform in which every change ushers in a new dawn (in Washington, the sun rises 300 times a day and on Madison Avenue, 600).

Whatever would happen if "no recommendation" or the recommendation of "no change" became as legitimate and fashionable as "more change"? Would the nation become more conservative or would change become more meaningful? Would the remaining recommendations be taken more seriously or would the volume of com- missioned research be halved? In a recent report on the use of accreditation to determine the eligibility of postsecondary institutions for federal education programs, some colleagues and I wrote:

Social science has no magic wand with which to conjure up miracle solutions that everyone will admire and no one has ever thought of. " . . . we can promise to be good, but we cannot promise to be clever," said Keynes with more modesty than most Washington economists.

Are we obligated to recommend a solution if we see none ? We want to be useful, but we must above all be honest. To toot on a convenient horn and then walk away is to be neither.

Our first conclusion must thus, regrettably, be that we see no really satisfactory solution to the general eligibility problem . . . . Present eligibility systems are unsatisfactory and practicable alternatives are also likely to be unsatisfactory. By the same token, several eligibility systems are workable if flawed and deficient'.... Defects are not disasters.S

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One reader found that passage "appalling" and another, "really offensive." Nonethe- less, I believe it is true and that present conventions have converted policy research from the collection of attainable information to the fabrication of contrived solutions. They keep research and policy scurrying from pillar to post, they make for perpetual change and employment, they promote the illusion of progress. But are they honest ?

The influence of institutional settings upon the intellectual character of research seems too obvious to be noted; yet, to add "and political" character is to invite the righteous wrath of those who insist that, as social "scientists," they do not, like their fellow citizens, breathe, vote, and hold political views that bear a proximate relation to their social and intellectual convictions. On top of that, custom and tax law dictate a measure of hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness9 from the prudent staff and officers of nonprofit foundations and institutes.

"Nonpartisanship" represents a conscious or instinctive acceptance of political "reality" (the territory ranging roughly from the mid-point or mid-right of the Republican to the mid-left of the Democratic Party) which can occasionally prove quite short-sighted. Thus, $76 billion dollars was the lowest Defense budget considered worthy of discussion in the Brookings review of the Administration's 1973 budget, published in the spring of 1972. When presidential candidate George McGovern broached a lower target, that immediately redefined the range of budgets deemed "realistic" by these "nonpartisan" economists (some of whom proceeded, on their own time and as private citizens, to advise Mr. McGovern). Two years later, the highest Defense budget entertained in the Brookings review was so "low" that Defense Secretary Schlesinger criticized it for "partisanship. ''1~

The tactics of official and centrist policy research are astutely described in Guy Benveniste's The Politics of Expertise. A few extracts may give the flavor of the analysis:

. . . experts . . . often adopt the posture of 'realists.' Reality . . . usually involves a simplified image of man . . . .

� 9 a principal function of the apolitical definition of the policy expert's role is the exact opposite of the definition: it provides access to social power without political election.

The expert forces the political actors to identify themselves and state their positions... while [he] remains uncommitted.. , until the strongest factions emerge.

Lead time advantages and data specialization allow the expert to produce a large body of research that cannot be disputed in the short time within which policy decisions have to be made . . . . Definite limits on participation in formal consultation permit the creation of a selective consensus.

Expert groups in policy work . . . [must] produce not only a professional piece of work but also a shrewd political documentJ 1

Despite the obligatory espousal of "apoliticism" in governmental and "scientific" research, avowedly partisan research has proliferated strikingly. Each policy group may maintain the posture of neutrality and even believe it, as nonprofit trade and professional associations believe that what is good for their trade is good for the nation. But the trades compete. Policy research is at best a mirror held up to our political nature, a faithful reflection of national conflicts and compromises. As the

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social sciences have left the academy for the arena of public affairs, more special interests and institutions have hired their own professionals to promote and defend their interests, monitor the work of their enemies, and prepare whatever briefs may be required. The advocacy role has long been accepted by business economists and independent economic consultants; it has become entrenched in the Council of Economic Advisers; it is axiomatic in the for-profit research and consulting firms and not-for-profit institutes like Battelle and the Stanford Research Institute; it is inherent in the large complex of contract research centers tied to the aprons of federal agencies. Every established and rising new interest--consumers, environmentalists, students, women--every occupation and profession licensed to practice or campaigning for licensure arranges for its own research and advocacy. Advocacy in a democracy need not be crude; to succeed, it must have the color of the public interest and the more natural the color, the better.

Is all this too abstract ? Let us, then, consider some practical, public policy aspects of policy research and research institutes. These already merit tax regulation. They may one day also merit legislation or its common precursor, the voluntary enunciation of, and compliance with, standards of operation, control, and accountability by tax exempt institutions purporting to serve the public interest.

Is Autocracy in the Public Interest? At present, most nonprofit institutes are autocracies which account to whom they please when they please: primarily, to their sponsors; infrequently and (in both senses) partially to trustees of their own selection. Many fail to publish timely annual reports or to complete their tax returns satisfactorily (the tax forms could be much improved). Board meetings are commonly closed to the public and even to staff; the public does not have the opportunity afforded shareholders of a for-profit corporation to question officers at an annual meeting. Draft reports--in Washington, people are more interested in drafts than in publications, which lag too far behind the moving front of decision--are distributed selectively and final reports may be administratively restricted. Research institutes do not normally publish corrections and criticisms of their work.

By what objective tests can such organizations be said to operate in the public interest rather than that of their sponsors, officers, and staff? The nondistribution of net income is a condition of nonprofit status, not of public service; it is held by the American Medical Association, trade shows, shopping centers, churches, and other sectarian organizations.

The Brookings Institution claims no responsibility for the work of its staff. "The Institution," its disclaimer states, "maintains its position of neutrality on issues of public policy, in order to safeguard the intellectual freedom of the staff." Yet few Republicans or radicals, theorists or institutional economists enjoy that freedom. It is not difficult to compile a list of scholars too distinguished, conservative, or out- spoken to be comfortable there. All projects and manuscripts must be personally approved by the president who often changes words he dislikes; bulletin boards are also censored, notices deemed offensive (often, humorous comments on the Brookings

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administration) being removed. Staff who offend the regime are dismissed without a hearing or statement of cause and the distinguished board, which has few discernible functions besides investment counselling and window dressing, may not even reply to an appeal. "Conflict of interest" means what the president says it means and some of his judgments are sharply contradictory. A few staff enjoy special privileges, but most must swelter under blankets of committees, anonymous readers, endless redrafts, and inexplicable delays in quest of a manuscript acceptable to the president. The "freedom" of Brookings staff is just another word for conformity.

Brookings is exceptional in its antiquity, endowment, leisureliness, costliness, the quality of its typography and of its relations with the Ford Foundation (which, it is said, is like a cow milking herself). Its able, if often arrogant, staff are handicapped by an incompetent, evasive administration which precludes vitality and stays a measured pace behind the moving front of controversy. In 1967, Brookings would not look at the cities when they were burning; in 1970, it could not conceive of a steady-state economy. Still, Brookings remains one of our more significant and respected policy institutes. If it fails some of its public and intellectual responsibilities, many institutes fail more abysmally.

The larger problem is that the policy research community has no common under- standing of its public responsibilities, that there are no agreed codes or conventions by which to distinguish research conducted and administered in the public interest from that entirely legitimate and indispensable research which serves special interests. Is it beyond our power to prepare such codes and to classify institutes and projects in accordance with their conformity to one or another set of standards ? The main lines of cleavage would probably be in the forms of governance and financing; the openness or confidentiality of internal discussions, minutes, finances, and research reports; and (since openness must always be balanced against the maintenance of confidences) a readiness to submit contested practices to independent adjudication, much as ethical charges are adjudicated by professional boards. Such conventions would not be easy to define or administer; if it proves impossible to define them, then we must confess that "policy research in the public interest" has no operational meaning.

The Status of Reports I am not yet quite prepared to acknowledge that. To indicate some of the complexities involved, let us consider the status of reports and take as our point of departure the assumption that a report is politically neutral when it is available to all interests, and partisan when it is accessible only to some. It is immediately apparent that the validity of this assumption depends on what is in the report and on the knowledge of who has access to it; and, what is more, that this is true at every stage from the initiation of a project through the research process, the first and last draft, to the multiplication of final copies and their ready availability (including such factors as their cost and bulk). For knowledge of who will or may see a report obviously affects the kind of information that goes into it. A report may be classified to keep military information from an enemy or, if it is deliberately leaked, to enhance its credibility. The possibilities of deception and duplicity, of feigning or fabricating evidence or,

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most frequently, of disclosing selected truths are limited only by the imagination of informants. These possibilities are entirely realistic where status and money and power are concerned, as they usually are in policy affairs.

Witness Mr. Nixon's tapes: duplicitly recorded, selectively released, and containing feigned statements of innocence. Diplomacy is replete with forgeries, half-truths, and full lies interspersed with deliberate or accidental lapses into honesty; and the record of the President's honesty with the American people, and the honesty of some scholars in his entourage, has been shameful from 1961 through early August 1974. Yet, while our government is deceitful, scholars serving the government imagine or pretend that citizens remain gullible, open and trusting, giving frank and honest answers to every question they are asked, confiding their sins and secrets to nameless inquisitors.

Policy research must, unfortunately, operate on the opposite assumption that the answers and information supplied by informants are partisan, if not misleading, and that significant truths are withheld.12 Indeed, since individuals have a right to privacy and cannot be compelled to testify against themselves, their release or withholding of information may ultimately be governed by the advice of legal counsel, subpoenas, and judicial orders. (A request which I recently made of a large correspondence school for information on the number of its students who dropped out before completing their course produced a phone call from their Washington counsel.) Conversely, the investigator's ability to obtain damaging information can depend upon his ability (and even, as in the Samuel Popkin case, his readiness to go to jail) to protect the con- fidentiality of his sources. Yet the maintenance of confidence weakens the scholarly quality of a work and may protect the anonymity of scoundrels. Policy research is thus confronted with a sequence of interlocking dilemmas that cannot all be resolved by the simple doctrine of full public disclosure.

An investigator may bring either impartiality (i.e. innocence and ignorance) or bias (i.e. ideas and convictions) to a study; he then collects a body of information which, try as he may, is selective and imbalanced, one way or another. Finally, that informa- tion is reduced to a draft report. The handling of this report is critical to any judgments of its political neutrality or partisanship. There are practical limitations to the ability of an institution or sponsor to control an investigator during the course of his work. Survey questions can be reviewed and clearance required; government staff may even have to clear their interviews with designated officials or private citizens. However, the staff of private institutions enjoy far greater freedom and the principal point at which institutional controls operate is the draft report. To whom is it sent for comment ? Is a copy made available to anyone upon request ? What is done with the comments ? The answers to such questions help to determine the degree and nature of an investigator's advocacy, and who should be held responsible for it. If an investigator is morally compelled to heed the comments of a reading committee, do not the members of that committee bear some responsibility for the resultant report ? If a government official or institute director requires certain changes before accepting a report, is he not respon- sible for those changes ? Why, then, does he disclaim responsibility in the false and misleading statements stamped upon policy reports ?

When time and money permit, I believe that a draft report should be reproduced in enough copies--some 200 will normally suffice--and distributed for information and

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comment to all major parties with an interest in the outcome and to all major sources of information. The draft should be a public document available to the press, the Congress, and to hostile as well as friendly scholars. This advance notice permits all parties to take timely action in defense of their interests and relieves the sponsor and investigator of the political advantage of prior knowledge. 13 All parties should be given an opportunity to present their views in an appendix to the final report. If this is not feasible, comments, corrections, and criticism should be invited both in confidence and also for public use, and the latter should be open for inspection by the press and the public.

Such a practice would not eliminate whatever partisanship a report may contain, but it would introduce a greater degree of political and intellectual fairness into the research process. To ask for nonpartisanship may be to ask for the impossible, but research can be more, or less, fair; more, or less, obviously a tool of special interests and political manipulation.

A Fairness Doctrine in Policy Research Perhaps that is the practical and administrable course for the profession--and the Internal Revenue Service !--to pursue: a fairness doctrine in policyresearch. Wewould, then, talk less about an undefinable "public interest" and unattainable "nonpartisan- ship" and more about definable and observable institutional and project practices.

One type of project would be fully open, somewhat like a Congressional hearing, with all finances, evidence, drafts, and criticism available for public inspection, and with the individuals responsible for every stage of research and every portion of a report openly identified--including the institution president and the copy editor who corrects, or inserts, errors in the manuscript. When sponsors, institutions, and in- formants appreciate what is entailed, relatively few such projects may be conducted even by the Public Interest Research Groups spawned by Ralph Nader. At the other extreme would be the project whose finances, data, and reports would be disclosed solely at the discretion of the sponsor.

If it is reasonable to tax institute income gained by proprietary work for industry, is it unreasonable to tax the income of confidential work for a government agency ? (The special problems of classified work are excluded from this discussion.) Tax status is, however, inadequate to classify the many parameters of institute governance and operations important to the research community. Is the power to hire and fire held solely by the officers and director or is it shared with the trustees and staff? Does any form of tenure prevail and what are the grounds and terms of severance ? Is there a grievance procedure ? How are board members chosen and what interests do they represent ? What powers do they really exercise ? Are any of their minutes and meetings open to the public ? How would a conflict-of-interest charge against board members be handled ? Who are the principal sponsors ? How much work is obtained from a sole source and how much by open competition ? How much is privileged and how much is in the public domain ?

The answers to such questions should help to identify those to whom an institute accounts and the interests it serves. By all means, let us continue to speak of "the

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public interest," if we are so inclined; it is at best a noble and at worst a harmless expression. But let us also identify the individuals by whom and the practices by which it is defined. That is a simple empirical procedure and are we not all empiricists ?

N O T E S

1 Consider Keynes's merciless dissection of President Wilson's character in The Economic Consequences of the Peace or almost any of his Essays in Persuasion or Essays in Biography which shred the vapid conventions of social science discourse. Galbraith has a similar penchant to flout convention. Arrogant, perceptive, and irrepressible, both men have recognized the pertinence of character to the making of policy, and the usefulness of impertinence to attract attention.

2 Cf. Murray Levine: " . . . important problems of psychology involve whole human events that always take place in a historical and social context. Whole human events cannot be properly treated or understood when divorced from a total social and historical context . . . . Research efforts, based on a conceptualization of the interaction of isolated variables in an aseptic environment, violate this assumption badly" ("Scientific Method and the Adversary Model," American Psychologist, September 1974, p. 665).

3 Cf. Walter B. Wriston: "Increasingly, small groups of men and women, elected by no one, announce that they alone are privy to the secret of what constitutes the public interest. The men who drafted our Constitution were unaware that such wisdom resided in any group . . . . They rejected the view that a man's occupation made him either wise or foolish . . . . Walt Whitman made no exceptions when he said America was 'you and me'" ("No One Holds a Monopoly on America," New York Times, May 16, 1974, p. 41).

4 " . . . our worship of mere life, rather than the good or rational life, reflects the temper of an acquisitive society, feverishly intent on mere accumulation, and mortally afraid to stop to discriminate between what is worth while and what is not . . . . "

% . . we cannot praise life without including in our praise moral and physical evil, corruption and death. As experience certainly includes error and illusion, we cannot praise it indiscriminately as a support of truth. Finally, as reality undoubtedly includes the useless and the ugly, its praise cannot but confuse the arts."

"Instead of life we want the good life. Instead of accepting experience science dis- criminates between the experience of truth and the experience of illusion. Not all reality, but only a reality free from ugliness and confusing incoherence is the aim of art" (Morris Raphael Cohen, Reason and Nature, 1931, Free Press of Glencoe, New York, paperback edition, 1964, pp. 450, 456--457.

5 Franz Boas, the leading figure in American anthropology for many decades until his death in 1942, began as a physicist, mathematician, and geographer; at Columbia, he taught a statistics course said to be "of uncompromising rigor". His student and successor Alfred Louis Kroeber, though more of a humanist and trained subsequently also in psychoanalysis, conducted many statistical studies of Indian culture traits, women's skirt lengths, and civilizations, tedious enough, no doubt, to qualify for a National Science Foundation grant.

6 The papers are conveniently assembled in Edward Shils, ed., Criteria for Scientific Development, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 1968; cf. also Harold Orlans, "Criteria of Choice in Social Science Research," Minerva, October 1972, pp. 571-602. I would much appreci- ate information about other papers addressing this problem.

Discussing some factors involved in the diffusion of agricultural improvements, Vernon Ruttan suggests that "a primary rationale for public investment in the development of capacity in the social sciences and professions is to produce institutional innovations which result in more efficient institutional performance . . . . An implication of this perspective is that the returns to public investment in social science research capacity-- the contribution of social science research to economic growth and development--can be

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enhanced if more explicit attention is devoted, in the allocation of social science resources, to the potential value of new knowledge in the social sciences to institutional change" ("Technology Transfer, Institutional Transfer, and Induced Technical and Institutional Change in Agricultural Development," May 3, 1973, 48 pp., offse0. That is a strictly optimistic and economic view. But the public investment in social science research capacity has also brought (or been accompanied by) reduced economic growth and less efficient institutional performance. Would---could--the nation be worse off if social science research capacity were halved? (Not to leave the question hanging: I believe it would make little difference if that capacity were either halved or doubled.)

7 The intrinsic irresponsibility of even the most "responsible" (carefully derived) recom- mendations of scholars was noted by Admiral Rickover when 1 was once introduced to him as "from Brookings." "Ah Brookings," he said. "'That's a brainy outfit. But one of your tables is wrong and you shrug your shoulders. One of my subs goes down, and that's another matter."

8 Harold Odans, N. Jean Levin, Elizabeth K. Bauer, and George E. Arnstein, Private Accreditation andPublic Eligibility, National Academy of Public Administration Founda- tion, Washington, D.C., February 1974, p. 554.

9 That word was used by NRA director General Hugh Johnson to describe the Brookings Institution and repeated with some glee by President Lyndon Johnson in a September 1966 address marking the Brookings 50th anniversary. "Before anybody asks that crowd for a prescription he must write his own diagnosis. It is one of the most sanctimonious and pontifical rackets in the country" (Government and the Critical Intelligence, An Address by President Lyndon B. Johnson, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., September 29, 1966, p. 12).

10 See Charles L. Schultze et al., Setting National Priorities, The 1973 Budget, p. 163 and Barry Blechman et al., Setting NationaIPriorities, The 1975 Budget, p. 132, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1972 and 1974, respectively.

11 Guy Benveniste, The Politics of Expertise, The Glendessary Press, Berkeley, California, 1972, pp. 188, 65, 71, 128-129, 145.

12 I have encountered three kinds of reactions to this suggestion. Some social scientists are interested and concerned, recognizing the threat to the profession of distrust by the citizenry. Others dismiss it as if distrust does not exist or should be ignored until it can be demonstrated to their satisfaction that distrust has increased significantly since 1962 or 1862 in a random sample of the population. Some get annoyed or even angry.

13 "Not necessarily," a reader comments. "To ensure this you'd have to send announcements of initiation of study to same mailing list." Perhaps. That is one purpose of the press release announcing a study and of the advisory committee representing the major parties at interest.

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