Political Science Has Its Own Lab Leaks
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Highlights
- A political science lab leak might seem as much of a punchline as the concept of a mad social scientist. Nevertheless, the notion that scholarly ideas and findings can escape the nuanced, cautious world of the academic seminar and transform into new forms, even becoming threats, becomes more of a compelling metaphor if you think of academics as professional crafters of ideas intended to survive in a hostile environment.
- Theories are only as sound as their assumptions.
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A long debate within political science concerns why this correlation might hold. International relations graduate students studying for comprehensive exams have to keep straight numerous subdebates: whether the causes of the peace stem from the incentives of democracy for leaders or the deep normative underpinnings of liberalism; whether the real cause is capitalism and prospects for trade instead; whether political scientists have cooked the books by redefining U.S. adversaries as nondemocratic even when they have had representative governments; and how methods and measurements confirm or complicate the story.
- Much of this nuance drops away when we teach this material to introductory courses, the largest audiences we command. Surprisingly, as the Israeli scholar Piki Ish-Shalom argues in Democratic Peace: A Political Biography, even more nuance drops away when the idea reaches policymakers.
- Any serious discussion of lab leaks, whether the viral or the âviralâ kind, has to appreciate the trade-offs that come with playing with dangerous ideas. Research progresses best under minimal external constraints, but actual policy requires responsibility and prudence. Striking the right balance between vibrant academic exploration and staid policymaking requires the intellectual equivalent of vaccinations: building up intellectual antibodies in the political and policy worlds that can help officials and journalists maintain their skepticism against the simple, enticing, and wrong ideas that seem to explainâor fixâthe world.