FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 45 No. 1, January 2007 52–57© 2007 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

Blackwell Publishing IncMalden, USAFCREFamily Court Review1531-2445© Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, 2007January 2007451Original Article

Pruett/SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH and SOCIAL POLICYFAMILY COURT REVIEW

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND SOCIAL POLICY: BRIDGING THE GAP

1

Kyle D. Pruett

Clinical examples of misapplications of social science research are reviewed with an emphasis on what can belearned with regard to dealing with and preventing such misuse of this type of knowledge. The differences inlanguage and culture that characterize scientific research as separate from advocacy and social policy are alsoexamined, with recommendations for improved cross-cultural communication.

Keywords:

advocacy

;

social science research

;

social policy

;

reasonable hypotheses

;

unwarranted assertions

I have been asked to share my own experience and reflections concerning the politicalmisuses of scientific data in the family law domain. I would like to embed that discussionin the larger context of examining the critical differences between the cultures of scienceand advocacy. I doubt that this plenary session was designed to have us leave this roomthinking that we now know who the good guys are (us?) and everybody else who struggleswith this issue is simply out of luck. Such polarization will neither advance the field, norhelp us make better use of our hard won data if we cannot figure out how to talk to peopleoutside our field about it.

Three examples of my personal involvement in political uses and abuses of data thathave been enlightening for me will serve as the setting for this discourse. Like Dr.Johnston,

2

I have had threatening anonymous phone calls, letters, and e-mails sent to myhome. I have been accompanied to courtrooms by bodyguards. Such experiences do notmake me feel very successful as a scientist, communicator, or advocate. In fact, they makeme not want to talk with anybody for quite a spell about anything that I care about. I thinkthis is exactly why conversations like this are so vital in helping us remember why it is thatwe do what we do.

THE POLITICAL (AB)USES OF DATA

First case example: Oregonians may recall Measure 36. It was on the ballot in the lastelection and was an essential element in the debate over whether or not gay marriageswould be prohibited or allowed in Oregon. Measure 36 afforded the public, not the legislature,an up or down vote on this highly charged issue. Living on the other [Eastern] shore, I knewnothing about it until my daughter, an Oregonian herself, received a phone call from afriend with the following query, “Did you know that your father is listed on the Web siteof the proponents of Measure 36 as their expert consultant whose data proves that gaymarriage fails children?”

Correspondence: www.kyle.pruett@yale.edu

Pruett/SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND SOCIAL POLICY 53

When my daughter called to relay this conversation to me, the dismay in her voice wasless than comforting. I was thrown back on my heels and heard myself fast-talking toreassure her that I shared her shock and intended nothing of the kind. There had to be someexplanation and I would get to the bottom of it and get back to her. Meanwhile, she shouldcall her friend, thank her for the heads-up and reassure her that I had not lost my way. Thenext day I checked the relevant Web site to discover that my research had indeed beencherry-picked for a partial quote that

sounded

like “we” shared a common advocacystrategy opposing gay marriage. It was then generously slathered with some of what JanJohnston (2007) characterizes as “scholarly rumors.” Struggling to keep a level head,I made some inquiries of my own and found out—no surprise—that there was also ananti-Measure 36 advocacy group. They in fact were simultaneously trying to reach me.

When they asked if I would join

their

cause, I said I was far more interested in talkingdirectly with the sponsor of Measure 36 than promoting yet another polarizing battle ofthe experts. I was curious about how they had come to their conclusions about myposition, referencing my research to discourage gay marriage—a topic far outside of myfathering research domain. The anti-Measure 36 group offered to set up a conference callbetween me and the sponsor of Measure 36, and I got the opportunity to ask him what hethought he was doing with my research.

“If you look in my book,

Fatherneed

(Pruett, 2001), you will see that the partial quoteyou included in your pro-Measure 36 pamphlet is a misapplication of what I have said inmy research about developmental outcomes of children who have been raised by fathers.If you are thinking at the theoretical level about promoting the best statistical outcomes forchildren, the data argue that it is probably more protective to be raised by the mother andfather by whom the children were created. But I also say there is no evidence to suggestthat individual children are automatically at greater risk simply because they are raised inother family structures. The data do not say it, the literature does not say it, and I takeexception with your distortion of my work to suit your political ends.”

The sponsor apologized that he had not been more vigilant about his “staff’s misuse ofmy research” and wanted the chance to set things right. He spoke with a local journalistwho printed his version of our conversation, but it was too close to the election to probablyhave had much effect. In the end, the measure was defeated.

Second case example: John Bruer, president of the McDonald Foundation, wrote a bookcalled

The Myth of the First Three Years

(1999) in which he cherry-picked some of the dataabout the importance of early intervention that had been generated and published by anational nonprofit organization of which I was then president—Zero to Three: The NationalCenter for Infants, Toddlers and Their Families. The public television journalist /talk showhost Charlie Rose invited both of us to gather at his oak roundtable and have at it.

To summarize Bruer’s position, “It is all very interesting what is going on in the earlyyears, but what happens to the child is of little consequence, really, to subsequent intellec-tual development. In fact the federal government should not be wasting a lot of money onearly intervention, especially [on] very poor, young children at risk, because there is no datathat anything gets better.” This was a staggering misapplication and repudiation of thehighly regarded life work of most of the experts in the field of longitudinal research intoearly intervention—Sroufe (1988), Olds and Kitzman (1993), Provence and Naylor (1983),and Ramey et al. (2000). And then he concluded, basically, “Children have the best chancewhen they grow up in middle-class families.”

I wanted to ask, “So, John, do you have a plan to arrange that as your early interventionstrategy?” Instead, John went on to set up what Jan Johnston (2007) would call the straw-man

54 FAMILY COURT REVIEW

offense. He quoted, as he did in his book, some offhand remarks by the actor/director RobReiner, who, though a friend of Zero to Three, makes no claims to be a social scientist.Regarding the importance of stable early relationships and sufficient stimulation to maximizedevelopment, Reiner said in a media interview, “Look, if it has not happened by the age of3 it is not going to happen.” As much as we appreciated Mr. Reiner’s enthusiastic andcommitted support of early intervention, his comment allowed Bruer to use him as hisstraw-man distraction, grouping him with other leading authorities, whereupon he listedme and others whom he could now comfortably dismiss.

Finally, I put up the Mozart effect controversy as my last example of a clash betweenscience and advocacy because I think it is such a useful example of so many of the thingsJan Johnston (2007) was discussing. Most parents think that the Mozart effect is thescientifically proven improvement in their child’s cognitive competence after listening tomusic composed by the Salzburg genius. But what is it really?

Some University of Wisconsin undergraduates listened to 20 minutes of a Mozart pianosonata and then researchers looked at their abstract reasoning abilities. Their scores wentup eight to nine points, barely statistically significant, and the improvements decayed overthe next 2 weeks (Rauscher, 1993).

For the next 10 years, the people who sell Baby Einstein videos were exploiting theMozart effect as a marketing stimulus. As seen, the original research had nothing to do withyoung children. It probably has nothing to do with Mozart. In another piece in

Nature

(Rauscher, 1999) 6 years later, a replication was attempted under more rigorous methodo-logical standards, where a third pretest condition was added. The authors read Stephen Kingnovels to the matched students for the same 20 minutes during which the other group waslistening to Mozart sonatas. Both groups showed an eight to nine point increase in abstractreasoning, which again decayed.

KNOWLEDGE VERSUS PERSUASION

Why this mess, and why are we here trying to sort this out? Science and advocacy playby different rules, employ different rules of evidence, and cater to different cultures. Advocacyis how we got things like Head Start. Science helped, but science could not do it alone,because science is by its very nature tentative about its findings. It is inherently skepticaland rigid about what we do know and what we do

not

know. Though it advances knowledge,that knowledge is perpetually incomplete. And that skepticism about the limitations ofscientific data—“yes, but we have to replicate, etc.”—is not the kind of enthusiastic endorsementthat judges and lawyers like to hear. For example, the expert witness wants to say the following:“Some people we left out of the study were not smart enough to include the first timearound, so we would do it differently if we had to do it again, etc . . .” But the lawyersworking with the expert may advise, “Maybe it is better not to add that part.” The expertwitness counters, “But you are asking me to tell you what is useful and what I know.” Well,sort of.

Advocates, on the other hand, use science as but one among many other things to pro-mote an agenda that reaches further than science itself. Advocacy is about negotiation andcompromise and is a more positive construct than scientific skepticism. It is also about theselective use of clinical judgment and judgments. Many of us here have been asked to makethe leap from data to clinical judgment. And you had better make sure you are belayed wellto your fellow climbers, because that is where a lot of people fall to serious injury. We are

Pruett/SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND SOCIAL POLICY 55

frequently tempted to do so because of our convictions that the problem before us issolvable by proper application of some of the things we think we know.

That is precisely why we need to be staying very close to what it is that we believe aboutprimary sources, established knowledge, reasonable hypotheses, unwarranted assertions, andthe limitations of our research. However, when the good lawyers with whom I work (actuallyknown as advocates in some cultures) encourage me to advocate for a particular positionduring my own custody evaluation, it is far too easy to forget where I should be rootedon the science/advocacy continuum. And they are just doing their job: to get me to saywhat they want me to say (or not say) on behalf of their client in front of the judge. Suchtensions are important—even healthy—and have led to some of the most creative work inour fields.

So if there is this cultural disparity between science and advocacy, what are we to do?How are we going to get together somehow? I have two proposals, based on data from mycolleagues’ respected work and my own experience. [Please note: whenever you have twoanswers to one question, it belies the probability that we really know the answer. I want tobe clear that I do not know the answer either.]

CROSS-CULTURAL DIALOGUE

Jack Shonkoff, dean of the Heller School at Brandeis and a pediatrician, began toaddress this problem a decade ago. When he moved from the practice of pediatrics toresearch, and then finally to policy, he had to face the fact that policy makers would notaccept his recommendations, though they were squarely based on his knowledge of thescience of child development. What was the problem? He gradually abandoned teaching forpersuading and then proceeded to codify the differences between the two. In so doing, hearticulated three helpful categories of persuasive information, and their limitations, all threeinherently cross-cultural in their intent (Shonkoff, 2001).

Established knowledge

is science hard and fast. It is derived of strict rules of evidence,with rigid boundaries around what we know and what we do not know. It is by definition anegative and tentative construct. When we are talking about established knowledge, we aretalking about primary sources published in peer-reviewed journals. Once we depart estab-lished knowledge, we move into the realm of

reasonable hypotheses

—a frequent occurrencewhen suggesting “reasonable” parenting plans, for example. When doing so, it is imperativethat we call it exactly that—a reasonable hypothesis, acknowledging that it may be anchoredin science, but rife with dashes of wisdom and speculation. It can be actionable—and I donot mean tort. It can move you to take action, but it can be wrong, unlike established knowledge(which may be incomplete). But once you move into a reasonable hypothesis domain, youmust always assume you could have a good chance, 50/50, of being wrong.

Finally,

unwarranted assertions

—distortions of science, erosion of the scientist’s credibility—are the last category of persuasive information. Examples of the confusions perpetrated bythese advocates are seen in the misuse of my own original research by the supporters ofMeasure 36 and in the conflation of my ideas with those of Rob Reiner by Bruer—bothdescribed above. It is critical to the ongoing integrity of social science research thatunwarranted assertions should always be labeled as such.

So how are we to help people move more comfortably and knowledgeably across thecultural divides that separate these categories of persuasive information? One of the morepromising ideas involves paying particularly close attention to how ideas are framed as part

56 FAMILY COURT REVIEW

of larger social discourse. Strategic Frame Analysis is based on the work of Susan Bales atthe Frame Works Institute/UCLA (2004). It provides a way of talking about what we knowso that people who do not share our lexicon can listen to and be informed by what we say.It relies more heavily on the use of metaphor and narrative to persuade than on establishedknowledge or reasonable hypotheses.

From my experiences giving expert testimony, I have come to understand how muchwork mental health and family law have to do resolving our uncommon, unshared language.Speaking with one voice is so immensely persuasive, especially when we can understandconcepts in terms of their frames and not in isolation from their effectiveness. For example,in addressing the needs/abilities of fathers to promote child well-being, framing that issueas “fathering” instantly evokes a narrative involving mothers, children, biology, responsi-bility, family history, providing, and so on. It is a more positive construct than discussingmen in the context of child development simply to lower rates of child abuse—the usualrationale for including men in intervention research or practice.

Such frames persuade not by relying solely on primary sources as their data framework,but more on thinking about carefully chosen metaphors as persuasive applications of whatwe know. We know from the research on memory that metaphors and narratives are morememorable and persuasive than abstract, impersonal data alone. Metaphors and narrativesappear to pass through the amygdala prior to storage, a part of the brain that applies emotionalsalience to information. Scientific data that remains abstract in nature and unrelated to personalexperience or affect seems to go into another category altogether. Our practical experiencetells us that data does not persuade policy makers nearly as effectively as do human-intereststories.

Another example of the use of narrative lies in the lessons learned from efforts to fund earlyintervention. We have learned to stop talking about child development as a positive constructin and of itself, isolated from the lives of the children we are trying to improve. Nobody

really

knows what it means. It is a yawner that frequently costs you your audience’s attention. Wehave felt more effective talking about education and growth—old-fashioned, less clinical, morecontextual words. We now talk about the value of love and relationships in the first 3 years, andnot just academics. We tell inspiring stories of individual children who have beaten theodds, once their families were given the right supports at the right time. Policy makers seemto appreciate, remember, and feel more compelled to act on these kinds of information.

This is a way to frame both positive advocacy and reasonable hypotheses as economicassets—especially for business leaders. One of its more articulate champions is ArtRolnick. As head of the Federal Reserve in Minnesota, he is out there with this evangelicalmessage, talking about investments in the early years as a wise economic policy in and ofits own right.

These have been a few thoughts about our field’s successful traverse of our own sacredterritories, such that we now find ourselves engaging new and old neighbors at our borderswho challenge the way we use our information. It is time to see if there are cultural bridgesthat we can build.

NOTES

1. Yale University School of Medicine. This article was presented at a plenary session of the 42nd AnnualConference of AFCC, Seattle, WA, May 18–21, 2005.

2. This refers to remarks made at the same plenary session by Janet Johnston (2007).

Pruett/SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH AND SOCIAL POLICY 57

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Kyle D. Pruett, M.D., Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center, is boththe Director of Medical Studies and Undergraduate Studies at the Yale School of Medicine.