Recommended Citation
Maher, Thomas V.; Seguin, Charles; Zhang, Yongjun; and Davis, Andrew P., "Social scientists’ testimony before Congress in the United States between 1946-2016, trends from a new dataset" (2020). Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund. Paper 222.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230104
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0230104
Date of this Version
3-25-2020
Keywords
scientists, sociology, social sciences, political science, public policy, United States, governments, legislation
Abstract
Congressional hearings are a venue in which social scientists present their views and analyses before lawmakers in the United States, however quantitative data on their representation has been lacking. We present new, publicly available, data on the rates at which anthropologists, economists, political scientists, psychologists, and sociologists appeared before United States congressional hearings from 1946 through 2016. We show that social scientists were present at some 10,347 hearings and testified 15,506 times. Economists testify before the US Congress far more often than other social scientists, and constitute a larger proportion of the social scientists testifying in industry and government positions. We find that social scientists’ testimony is increasingly on behalf of think tanks; political scientists, in particular, have gained much more representation through think tanks. Sociology, and psychology’s representation before Congress has declined considerably beginning in the 1980s. Anthropologists were the least represented. These findings show that academics are representing a more diverse set of organizations, but economists continue to be far more represented than other disciplines before the US Congress.
Comments
This is the publisher PDF of Maher TV, Seguin C, Zhang Y, Davis AP (2020) Social scientists’ testimony before Congress in the United States between 1946-2016, trends from a new dataset. PLoS ONE 15(3): e0230104. This article is distributed under a CC-BY license, and is available at DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230104.