Forensic Social Science

If you like your social science balanced and objective ("on the one hand, on the other hand") you will find this book infuriating. But you may be applying an irrelevant standard. This book does not pretend to be part of the tradition of balanced, objective social science in which the scholar hides (or claims to hide)his personal biases, and attempts to present all the evidence on both sides of a set of questions so that the reader may judge for himself. Rather it is part of what may be emerging as a new tradition of forensic social science in which scholars or teams of scholars take on the task of writing briefs for or against particular policy positions. They state what the position is and bring together all the evidence that supports their side of the argument, leaving to the brief writers of the other side the job of picking apart the case that has been presented and detailing the counter evidence.