This article makes an “ok” case for social science being in its infancy (I think it is in some ways, but is more mature than widely thought in others), and a very good case for most social interventions being ineffective due to their being undertaken in methodologically flawed ways.

Most interventions are embarked upon by working backwards from unproven (often political) theories and an extremely limited range of possible tools (“give money”, “take money”, “physically punish”). That leads to the mother of all searching-only-under-the-streetlight fallacies.

But that doesn’t necessarily indict the social science academy/frontiers of understanding (which, again, are plenty flawed—just perhaps not quite as stone-aged as the author suggests). Usually, it indicts the state/designers of the intervention in question. Blaming the sciences sometimes sounds like blaming car airbag designers for motorcyclist deaths.

I’m reminded of the conservation efforts for the spotted owl. Famous academic naturalists were asked to design a conservation plan that worked with logging. They did. The state replied “fine, but we need to clear-cut 90% of the forest you asked for, so make do with 10% of the habitat”. The program did poorly, but not because the academic understanding of how to address the problem was as flawed.