Social Science Space

This election season, spare a thought for the travails of the American national Election Study and two other data-rich surveys promoted — and protected — by the National Science Foundation’s Social, Behavioral and Econoic directorate.

Picking up where Tom Coburn left off, the new U.S. senator from Oklahoma has released a punny compendium of what he sees as wasteful federal spending , including the inevitable shots at social and behavioral science grants.

A little bit of poli sci learning might be a tonic in Washington. But as Michael Harris points out, some legislators like Dr. Tom Coburn want to restrict funding for their ‘medicine.’

Michael Lubell, accomplished professor of physics, explains why the social sciences are critical to the advance of science and technology, and explains why we need to protect the social sciences from political attempts to de-fund them.

Congress just cut funding for political science because they don’t understand the good it does. Here are four excellent examples.

There has been a good deal of debate across the web this week following the publication of a report by […]