Monkey Cage Blog has a great post up in response to criticism of his exhortations to study social sciences. He makes a broad argument about the validity of social science research because it has effects on the way that people live their lives. To be selfish for a moment, he highlights some important questions that I examine every day:
Families. What makes families more or less successful? What makes marriages more successful? What makes them fail? What are the effects of divorce? Does it hurt the children of divorce? How much, in what ways, and for how long? A medical doctor can treat the effects of family dysfunction and divorce—say, with anti-depressants or therapy and so on—but we can learn and know more about how to prevent some of this dysfunction from doing social science.
The post is really about funding for social science research rather that defending my everyday work. It’s also not really about teaching undergrads social sciences, but clearly, we have train undergrads in social sciences if we eventually want some of them to do research in the social sciences. I think there’s a point to be made about how learning about these wide-reaching social phenomena—families, schools, economies, politics, attitudes, networks and norms—forces students to think about cause and effect in a nuanced way. When it’s not clear how X might affect Y or how Z has effects on X that in turn effect Y, it takes creativity and imagination and critical thinking to sort it out. It’s not that social sciences can do this exclusively, but the nature of the topics student lends itself to varied analysis and the development of skills that are useful in many careers.
ERIN K. FLETCHER 