Friend & Foe: Better Living Through Social Science Research

Friend & Foe: Better Living Through Social Science Research by Jonathan A. Knee, DealBook

Academic work in the social sciences often elicits puzzlement from those outside the scholarly realm. Even after one cuts through the layers of technical jargon, the nature of the questions asked can be mystifying.

On the one hand, the lengths to which researchers go to “prove” propositions that seem intuitively obvious to a layman are perplexing. On the other hand, the topics pursued can be so narrow as to be of little apparent use in any complex, real-life situation. More broadly, the entire approach often seems intended to avoid attracting any possible general interest.

This phenomenon is explained partly by the fact that success...