Science and the Citizen

Recent action by the Social Relations Department in suppressing irresponsible undergraduate polling has raised larger issues of the growing responsibilities of social science. Infant branches of learning, before they reach maturity, are sometimes given to extravagant claims and methods in an effort to win a place in the sun of public recognition. Only age brings tentative wisdom to eager disciples of new faiths.

The College Social Relations Department, under the restraining hand of Professor Gordon W. Allport, has limited its zealots to sensible and reasonable procedures. Last week one misguided undergraduate got a quantity of polls from his victims in envelopes that were carefully numbered under the stamps, although the poll was termed "anonymous" by its author. Professor Allport has burned these self-incriminating documents-some students had expressed Communist views-and has sent letters of apology to all recipients.

Such proceedings suggest that the individual who voluntarily offers himself as a guinea pig for the social science pollster be precisely advised, at all times, of the risk he assumes. All realistic persons know that we live in an age of Loyalty Commissions and Congressional Investigations: letter carriers are fired for subscribing to "New Masses" and Navy Yard workers are dismissed for possessing Howard Fast's "Freedom Road." Any "scientist" who would investigate people's political, social, sexual, or religious attitudes and values owes a duty to the privacy and dignity of the people he questions. That duty is to warn the justifiably apprehensive respondent of the use to be made of the information procured. This duty is notably clear where the poll is termed "anonymous," and the individual polled is thereby lulled into what may be a false sense of security.