Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [439]
—In 2004 and 2005, Representative Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) ambitiously went the whole way, sponsoring amendments to the NIH appropriations bill to defund all mental health grants. Each time, the bills were approved by the House with the amendments included. What would have become of mental health research in our country is hard to say; fortunately, the amendments died in the House-Senate conference committee.32
—In 2005, during consideration of the fiscal year 2006 Science, State, Justice, and Commerce appropriations bill, which includes funding for the National Science Foundation, Representative Anthony Wiener (D-NY) tried to reduce NSF’s Research and Related Activities account by $147 million in order to boost funding for the Community Oriented Police program. Wiener’s amendment failed.33
—In 2005 and 2006, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), chair of the Senate Science and Space Subcommittee, submitted an amendment to an act affecting the National Science Foundation that would have directed NSF not to fund grants in the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. An uproar from the scientific community and an opposing amendment offered by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) resulted in a bipartisan compromise amendment that allowed NSF to continue funding all the sciences.34
What motivates these members of Congress to oppose social and behavioral research? It is possible that they really feel some of the targeted studies are “improper” or wasteful or potentially refutative of their political and social beliefs. But it is also possible that they are primarily playing to the audience of their constituents—those elements of American society that are fearful of science or hostile to scientific research that threatens their belief systems. Whatever the answer, it is clear that government funding of research in the social and behavioral sciences, relatively minor though it is, will probably continue to be attacked by congresspersons whenever it suits their purposes.
In addition to administration officials and legislators, many special-interest and advocacy groups outside the government have attacked particular kinds of research, sometimes succeeding in hampering work, sometimes actually aborting projects. Ironically, this has been happening during the several recent decades in which psychology has been making its most striking advances. More ironically, these efforts to block research have been made not only by conservative groups but by liberal, radical, antiestablishment, and politically middle-of-the-road groups.
One such essentially middle-ground force is the “animal rights” movement, whose followers have often resorted to violence, breaking into medical and psychology laboratories, destroying equipment and records, and sometimes making off with the animals. Leaders of the animal rights movement argue that animal and human lives are morally equivalent and that performing experiments on animals that would be unacceptable on human babies is “speciesism.” Animal research, in their view, is immoral regardless of the benefits. Their ethical stance was epitomized some years ago by Chris DeRose, founder and director of Last Chance for Animals, who said, “If the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn’t make any difference to me.”35
Many other areas of psychological research have been regularly, fiercely, and often successfully opposed by other special-interest and advocacy groups, some of the politically correct kind, others politically conservative, and yet others of a traditionalist middle ground. To evince interest or pursue research in any of the topics blacklisted by these groups can result in anything from hate mail, public demonstrations, threats of violence, and physical assaults to, in academe, failure to be promoted, ostracism by one’s colleagues, lack of tenure, and rejection of research papers by journals—in sum, academic oblivion. Here are a few such areas of research:
—genetic differences in IQ (attacked by minorities, radicals, and some liberals for nearly forty years as being racist);