and also looking at the characteristics of individuals with specific demographic characteristics to find out which groups are giving certain kinds of answers.

With regard to what produces responses which we assume indicate alienation, there is certainly room for study. Psychologists are involved in those studies. I think there has been a good bit of cooperation. Perhaps there will be more in the future.

Mr. BROWN. The Harris poll has been taking soundings on this for a number of years, maybe 10 or 15. The thrust of the pollings seems to indicate that there is a certain shift in value structure in the population. Are you prepared to suggest a framework for research on changing value structures?

Dr. FARLEY. No, I don't think I am.

Mr. BROWN. Is this a matter subject to social science research?

Dr. FARLEY. I think the analysis of what the changes in values are as represented either by attitudes or by behavior is a subject of investigation for many sociologists and people in applied disciplines. The framework or development of frameworks for analyzing such data, for interpreting such trends, and for ultimately understanding what kinds of change are occurring is also a legitimate area of inquiry which is quite lively.

Mr. BROWN. All right. Dr. Farley, I think all of you have made a very useful contribution in terms of our understanding of your discipline and its relationships and foundations. May I just ask you, in conclusion, do you share the views expressed by Dr. Lane that the research opportunities in sociological science are such that it could usefully be funded at a considerably higher level?

Dr. FARLEY. I think so. I believe the proportion of applications in the social science area, the sociological area in the NSF, which are funded by the Foundation, is in the neighborhood of 25 to 27 percent. Obviously, one would not want to fund at--I presume one would not want to fund 100 percent of the applications because even if they are of good quality, there may be some duplication, some questions of scale in splitting up research activities.

From reading National Science Foundation applications, my impression is that more than 25 percent of the applications deserve support.

Mr. BROWN. All right. Thank you all very much. There is considerable additional questioning we would like to explore if we had the time. Unfortunately, we have some time constraints this afternoon. If we do need to get some additional information from you, I hope that we can submit the questions and you will respond to them.

Thank you very much.

Dr. FARLEY. Thank you, Congressman Brown.

Mr. BROWN. We would now like to call Dr. Kenneth Prewitt, president of the Social Science Research Council and Dr. Frederick Mosteller, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Please come up, gentlemen. You have the distinction of putting the finishing touches on this day of testimony on the biological, social, and behavioral sciences. I hope that you will give us a statesmanlike perspective on the problems and opportunities in this field and how to overcome the difficulties.

STATEMENT OF DR. KENNETH PREWITT, PRESIDENT, SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL; AND DR. FREDERICK MOSTELLER, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

Mr. BROWN. Do you want to start, Dr. Prewitt?

Dr. PREWITT Yes, I think that's appropriate. The president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science should certainly get the last word at these hearings.

I would like to say, if I may, Congressman Brown, on behalf of the social science community, not that I really officially speak for it, that not just myself personally, but a great many people are appreciative of these hearings. It is recognized that these hearings are in some respects a new venture for the subcommittee and many are grateful that social scientists have the opportunity to come and share with you some of the complexities in the funding situation and the research situation in the social sciences.

In my very brief testimony, I'm going to address three question that are frequently asked of me. I have chosen these three questions because I suspect that they are questions, or variants of them, that are frequently asked of you as well and perhaps are even ones that members of the subcommittee sometimes frame in their own minds.

Are the social and behavioral sciences useful to the Nation? Social scientists often study problems in our economy, in our schools, in our cities throughout our society which nevertheless resist solution. Why is this? Finally, how important is basic research of the kind supported by the National Science Foundation to the usefulness of social and behavioral sciences?

Turning to the first question, the usefulness. One test of whether something is useful is whether it is used. The social and behavioral sciences clearly pass this market test. Everywhere I look, I see the practical application of concepts and ideas, of tools and techniques, of systematic data and ways of organizing information which can be traced to the social sciences.

Policymaking in this and other modern governments is heavily dependent upon a national statistical system which itself is the product of a half century of social science developments in measurement, statistics, demography, index construction, and survey methodology. Foreign policymaking and national security issues are debated and discussed in frameworks and often with information that owes much to the social scientific and humanistic research on non-American societies.

The language of discourse in government, in industry, and throughout the society draws upon the social sciences; terms such as externalities, reference groups, cost-benefit analyses, socialization, latent functions, all of these are social science terms which have found their way into public discourse.

To become more specific, I see the Committee on Banking, Currency and Housing making regular use of economic concepts, urban sociology, and sample surveys. I note that the Congressional Budget Office is largely staffed by economists, political scientists, and sociologists, and that these staff members bring the tools and concepts of their disciplines to the exacting task of advising on the national budget.

I see the Congressional Research Service and the General Accounting Office drawing upon the social science literature and consulting with persons trained in many social science disciplines. I doubt that the Antitrust Division in the Justice Department, now deliberating what action, if any, to take with respect to IBM and A.T. & T., could forecast the supply of goods and services or price fluctuations or job dislocations, or could analyze the relationship between corporate size and technological innovation, without the concepts and techniques of the social sciences.

Who, if not our social scientists and humanists, is going to provide the deeper interpretations and analysis of the enormous transformation now going on in China?

Perhaps the heavy use of social science can be demonstrated most starkly by imagining an Office of Management and Budget, a Central Intelligence Agency, a Department of Labor, or any number of congressional committees totally stripped of any ideas or approaches or analytic techniques or information bases which derive from the social and behavioral sciences.

The very difficulty we have playing this counterfactual game, trying to imagine the modern governing process in the total absence of the social and behavioral sciences, convinces us that they are indeed in demand. I find, then, it is fairly easy to answer the question, are the social sciences used?

I turn from this comparatively easy question, are the social sciences used, to the more demanding question, are they useful? The question appears in many forms. Some persons challenge the usefulness of social scientists because the problems which are said to be the subject matter of their studies resist solution.

Often this challenge is posed by comparing, unfavorably, the social with the natural sciences. If the natural scientists can produce the science which leads to putting a man on the moon, why cannot the social scientists produce the science which would lead to a strategy for decreasing crime and delinquency in America's cities or for predicting social revolutions in Third World countries? Setting aside the rejoinder that it took complicated organization, and thus administrative science, and theories of information processing and notions about human stress, and thus cognitive psychology, as well as calculations of rocket thrust to put a man on the moon, nevertheless, I take seriously the assertion that social science can never solve anything. I try to provide a response.

Let me tell a short story that will help put the usefulness issue in perspective. A quarter century ago, another president of the Social Science Research Council testified before a House committee. He came, in 1954, to defend the social sciences against the charge that they were part of a Communist conspiracy.

Well, we have all matured since then, the House, the social sciences, and the Nation, and I welcome the fact that I am here to defend the the social importance rather than the political patriotism of the social sciences.

In his testimony 26 years ago, Pendleton Herring told the following story. In the 1830's, when steamboats first began to come into use, there were some early problems with bursting boilers. A small research grant from the Secretary of the Treasury was given to a Professor Bates-I

have subsequently learned that Professor Bates was the grandson of Benjamin Franklin-of the University of Pennsylvania.

Bates and his research team reported among other things that "sometimes there is a little carelessness in stoking the fire." A bursting steam boiler is not just a matter of chemistry and physics; it is also a matter of operator training and human behavior. The first Government regulatory agency, the Steamboat Inspection Service, was accordingly established.

You will no doubt anticipate the next chapter in this little story. The President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island similarly concluded that it was "people-related problems and not equipment problems" that brought the Nation so close to a major tragedy. A report commissioned by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission echoed this conclusion, noting that the principal deficiencies in reactor safety "are not hardware problems, they are management problems."

Well, I tell this story not to make the obvious argument that the Nation needs more, not less, research on how complex decision systems operate under stress and on how technological information is processed both by human minds and in large organizations. This argument, I believe, is self-evident.

I will extract from the story a different principle. The complexities of the problems for which the social and behavioral sciences might be helpful are always going to be one step ahead of the problem-solving abilities of those sciences.

It would be foolish to pretend otherwise. Social scientists work with the world as they find it; and the world moves, changes, progresses, reverses direction. New technologies which derive from natural science discoveries, an increasingly interdependent international economy, a resurgency of religious fundamentalism, a rising revolution in human aspirations, shifting international alliances-these are just a few of the more dramatic developments that keep the problems of the world one step ahead of our ability to solve them.

Now, keeping in mind the principle that problems tend always to stay beyond the reach of problem-solving abilities, we can return more directly to a consideration of the usefulness of the social sciences. Probably no phrase has been repeated more often to this subcommittee than the famous assertion that science faces toward an endless frontier.

Well, so also does government, though for government, we might rephrase the metaphor. Government faces toward moving targets. International and national problems and issues don't sit still waiting for some definitive policy solution.

Problems shift, emerge, mutate, explode, decay, combine, and change. They do so even as policies are introduced and often in response to the policies themselves. A large part of governing is simply trying to cope and comprehend; another part, to be sure, is anticipating and trying to forestall or avert, but very little of government is "finding solutions." Now, it is in this context that we examine whether the social sciences are useful. Do they help us to cope and to comprehend, to anticipate and perhaps to avert? Has demography helped in the planning of government services? Has survey research helped designers of social welfare programs? Has game theory helped national security analvsts? Has econometrics helped business leaders? Has psycholinguistics

helped educators? Has political theory helped Presidential commissions on government reform?

If, to these rhetorical questions, admittedly, we answer with even a qualified yes, a sometimes or a maybe, then there is warrant to the claim that the social sciences are useful. I will put the issue as bluntly as I can. The social and behavioral sciences are not going to solve the nagging, persisting problems of this or any other nation. These disciplines are not a substitute government.

Rather, economics, anthropology, political science, geography, sociology, psychology, demography, and statistics are sciences. They are sciences whose progress is marked and whose usefulness is measured less by the achievement of consensus or the solving of social problems than by a refinement of debate and a sharpening of the intelligence upon which the collective management of human affairs depends.

Now, I believe that simple, summary statements are risky when speaking of activities which, as sciences, face an endless frontier, and, as contributors to the governing process, face a moving target. I nevertheless will try a one sentence defense of the usefulness of the enterprise. If the social and behavioral sciences contribute to practical judgment a bit more practicality and a bit more judgment than would in their absence be exercised, then I believe the case is made. I will quickly address the third of my questions, what is the relationship between basic research, of the type supported by the National Science Foundation, and the use and usefulness of social science concepts and methods?

I start with the reminder that the social and behavioral sciences are comparatively young. National support for basic research in these disciplines, for instance, extends only across one generation of scholars, although important private foundation support goes back another generation. Alas, I emphasize, private sector support has dwindled tremendously in the last three or four decades.

Yet, in this short time, serious scientific momentum has been established in many fields. So also has the application of results from these scientific advances.

I do not see a slackening in the national and international application of concepts and tools produced in the social and behavioral sciences. It may surprise you that I make this observation with some alarm. I am alarmed because I do see a slackening of support for basic research in the social science disciplines.

Therefore, I want to bring to your attention the danger of an imbalance between the science and the application, between the painstaking, autonomous research which tests models and perfects tools and the rapid growth of a social science R. & D. industry.

Let me emphasize at this point that the rapid growth of the social science R. & D. industry is itself a response to Federal funding.

Much has been asked of the social and behavioral sciences in the last two decades; perhaps too much, too soon. Many people believe that social science concepts and techniques are simple to acquire and apply, which is why applied social research is a relatively easy entry industry, giving rise to so-called beltway bandits.

I believe in the social and behavioral sciences, then, we face a unique danger. Activities labeled "social science" will grow even if the basic