Social Sciences

Please respond to the question after reading the first chapter of Freakanomics:

In what ways might social, political, cultural and religious factors affect the types of human science research that are financed and undertaken, or rejected?

Social, political, cultural, and religious factors affect the types of human science research that are financed, undertaken, and rejected. This is because there are limitations to areas of people's exploration. Personal motivations usually play a central role as to why research can be undertaken or rejected. For example, people with religious motives will downright refuse to believe that a god did not create the universe. Moral beliefs can often take over science. In politics, politicians will only show the negative side of the opposite candidate to further their own career and chance of winning a particular political race. In general people become so invested in a particular theory that they simply disregard any other information that could disprove that theory. There is also a possibility of a reward for proving a theory, so why would anyone want to disprove their own theory? There is a level of confirmation bias when people's own interests in furthering their own career takes over the actual scientific evidence presented. People are also clever in the way that they present their data. They can change language to make something wrong seem correct. The power of emotive language can completely change how people view a theory. People often will not disagree with numbers, so sometimes only data with numbers is shown. However, when others actually have to interpret the data there could be vast problems.


How might your group have responded to the crime issue of the 1990s?

How would they have reacted to the findings?