| Sumario: | In the same way that science cannot be free of implications for policy and politics, nor can social knowledge. The claim for social science's ideological neutrality is based on limiting it to a concern with facts rather than values, while conceding the legitimacy of political judgment in deciding how to use this information as a basis for action. Social science's methodology, precise and impersonal, is taken as the basis for objectivity and as a distancing from politics. However, the protection of this reputation for rigor and freedom from ideology demands sacrifices. Typically, these involve a focus on objects and problems that can be examined impersonally and an attempt to minimize the explicit invocation of judgment or insight; social science has become preoccupied with exactness, with neutral information, even when the object measured or characterized is not exactly what the social scientist is trying to comprehend.
|
|---|