ABSTRACT
Economics, sociology, psychology and the other social sciences have in recent times begun to play a new and problematic role with respect to national and international policy. Any discussion of villains and values, which inevitably is what the study of social science and public policy boils down to, involves two distinct areas. One is the empirics of present relationships between social science and public policy, its formation and its execution. The other is the question of what the relationship between social science and public policy should be. Social scientists involved with research defined as secret or confidential can easily develop a self-definition of importance derived from their connection rather than the intrinsic merits or demerits of their work. The autonomy of a social science is directly linked to the very existence of each field. The powerful argument for maintenance of a distinction between public policy and social science is that without such a distinction the very concept is severely jeopardized.
