THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH
    Objectivity and Ideology
    Politics with a Little "p"
    Politics in Perspective

    Just as researchers must cope with ethical issues that sometimes clash with purely scientific dictates, there are also political and administrative dimensions to cope with.  Sometimes, the content of research (e.g., studying the sexual behavior of teens) can bring the project into a collision with political, moral, and ideological interests.  I have referred to this as the "curse of science."  Social researchers are supposed to bring a degree of objectivity to topics that people often feel very strongly about.  We'll see how researchers cope with this situation.

    Even when a research project doesn't necessarily coflict with established political or ideological concerns, it may conflict with interested parties all the same.  Doing evaluation research in a prison, for example, may generate problems with the warden, the guards, or others who can feel threatened by the research procedures and/or by the conclusions drawn from the research.  This is not to say they are wrong and the researchers are right.  Thus, you might want to test an "honor system" of weekend passes for prisoners, letting them out the gates as long as they promise to come back--the warden would probably object (and should do so).

    The ethical and political constraints placed on social research make it all the more challenging and exciting.  Whereas people sometimes distinguish the "hard sciences" (e.g., physics, chemistry) from the "soft sciences" (e.g., social sciences), a case can be made for identifying social research as the "hard sciences" while calling physics and chemistry the "easy sciences."