Word: social
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...development fund receives much of its financial support from the Gannett Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation and a social service organization called "Action...
Beyond such charges, what really seemed at issue was a long-standing tension in U.S. academic circles between two groups -- physical, or "hard," scientists such as chemists, physicists and biologists, whose work traces cause-effect relationships and lends itself to mathematical proofs, and social, or "soft," scientists such as sociologists, psychologists and political scientists, whose work involves speculation about human motives and mixes subjective evaluation with fact. A political scientist, for example, cannot prove mathematically that Hitler's political regime was an inevitable consequence of Germany's post-World War I disarray, but he can make a pretty good case...
...Washington debates, Huntington drew some vehement support, particularly among the NAS's 177 social scientists, who have been admitted since membership criteria were widened 16 years ago to provide a broader social context for counsel to the Government. One social-scientist member said in a speech, "His work is quite impressive, and he is a very fine scholar and a good scientist." After the vote, Huntington defended equations in his writings as "simply a way of summing up a complicated argument." He added, "Good Lord, any good social scientist knows the things he studies are constantly changing, full of exceptions...
Nevertheless, at least a third of the 527 members meeting in Washington (the proportion needed to bar an election) seem to have been swayed by Lang's underlying argument that social scientists, however eminent, may not belong to the NAS and perhaps should form an academy of their own. Says one physical scientist: "It's not enough to be excellent. One has to meet the norms of science as well." But that view leaves wide open the question of who, inside the NAS or out, ought to define those norms...
...opening witness, a select congressional committee explores a secret privatization of foreign policy designed to defy Capitol Hill on contra aid. -- The first criminal casualty of the affair pleads guilty and points a finger at Oliver North. -- A varied cast of characters get ready to face a grilling. -- New social clubs offer AIDS screening for jittery singles...