Is it time to abolish the social sciences?

There is a crisis in many corners of the social sciences: academics struggling to replicate research results. Michael Lind is a fellow at the New America Foundation and he says whole fields of research have simply lost their way. In a recent commentary, he calls for the abolition of the social 'sciences'.

(The full interview is available in the audio player above. The following portions have been edited for clarity and length.)

Why would you like to see an end to social sciences, as we know them?
I took a somewhat humourous approach to a serious issue, which is whether there have been any real gains to scholarship from the attempt in the last century, century and a half, to create sciences of society modeled on natural sciences like physics and chemistry... In the way universities are organized now, in departments of the social sciences, there's a parallel between the physical sciences, in terms of the kind of research you do, leading to predictions in advancing problems within the discipline, and the social sciences, which I argue is a mismatch. The social sciences are much more like policy, arts or crafts and they're driven by the needs of society and of policy makers to a degree that the physical sciences are not and their organizations should reflect that.

Where does one draw the line, between pure science and an art or a craft?
I think the line is drawn with respect to the subjects of investigation. As I point out in my piece, atoms and asteroids go where they have to go; human beings go where they want to go. When you're studying human beings, or for that matter, any sentient animals — it could be dogs or chimpanzees or even rats — it's a matter of motivation and not merely motions. Fundamentally, all of the human studies are based in understanding human psychology.

What sorts of real-world consequences do you fear coming out of this if we keep treating social sciences like hard sciences?
Well, we've seen some of it. Economic policy making, in particular, tends to be driven as much by class interest or the relative interests of particular nation-states, as it does by academics, so I won't blame the academics too much for bad policy making. But if you were claiming that a certain economic policy is backed up by science and that to oppose it is like opposing the law of gravity, then you're much less likely to reverse course and try something else, if it's simply offered as one of a number of policy options.

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