Social Science Gone Wrong- what not to do

In Monday's NY Times, op-ed columnist David Brooks talks about change in the Senate which will make it more like the House. He says the Senate is home to "person-to-person thinking" and that "because one senator had the ability to bring the whole body to a halt, senators had an incentive, every day, to develop alliances and relationships with people in the other party". He contrasts this with the House, which he refers to as embodying a "clan psychology", where individuals have little power and decisions are made on the group level.

He notes that the Senate is becoming increasingly like the house in this respect, despite attempts by prominent democrats, including our very own president, to curtail this change. The problem is that the crux of Brooks's argument hinges on what he calls humans' innate sense of sympathy. It is true that humans, along with many other species, have an internal sense of sympathy or empathy, causing us in many cases to have an internal sense of fairness and to avoid violating the social code. Brooks notes that with the shift from person-person interactions to group-group interactions there comes to a degree a loss of this empathy and natural mimicry.

Brooks uses this to shape his argument, saying that humans are naturally inclined to be sympathetic, and that forming in-groups and out-groups as he notes would happen with the impending shift in the senate would "bleach out normal behavior and the normal instincts of human sympathy". To make this argument is to deny that the formation of such groups was a crucial factor in human evolution.

Brooks's argument is riddled with poor science, to a degree that undermines the efforts of many to seek consilience between the sciences and the humanities. It may be true that we should work to stop these changes in the Senate and that to change the current system would be a step in the wrong direction. But what Brooks has done is grab a snippet of science, ignore all context, and mold it to fit his argument. This is what led to the idea of social darwinism. It is also what led to the eugenics movement which, unbeknownst to many, played a prominent role in early 20th century American domestic policy (I would highly recommend this paper).

What Brooks is doing isn't as dangerous as social darwinism or eugenics, but it's a chip off the same block. Poor use of scientific evidence to support policy arguments in appallingly superficial ways has been a giant setback to both the sciences and the understanding between disciplines. Humans evolved, this is clear. As such, it is productive to consider evolution and the forces which shaped animal behavior before the phenomenon of culture got underway. To do this correctly will prove invaluable; to do it sloppily and superficially is an obvious burden to consilience and understanding.