MACMILLAN Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America (Socio-Historical Studies of the Social and Human Sciences)

This book describes how Cold War researchers used expert opinions to construct foreknowledge of geopolitical relevance. Focusing on the RAND Corporation, an American think tank with close relations to the armed forces, Dayé analyses the development of two techniques of prognosis, the Delphi technique and Political Gaming. Based on archival research and interviews, the chapters explore the history of this series of experiments to understand how contemporary social scientists conceived of one of the core categories of the Cold War, the expert, and uncover the systematic use of expert opinions to craft prognoses.This consideration of the expert’s role in Cold War society and what that can tell us about the role of the expert today will be of interest to students and scholars across the history of science, the sociology of knowledge, future studies, the history of the Cold War, social science methodology, and social policy.  Review “In the future, historians of social science would be wise to follow Dayé's recommendation to focus more of their work on explicating the historical embeddedness of research methods and techniques. Doing so will not only help us understand the latter on their own terms, but will also provide insight into the important role epistemology plays in shaping Americans' approach to the world.” (Daniel Bessner, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, July 23, 2021) From the Back Cover This book describes how Cold War researchers used expert opinions to construct foreknowledge of geopolitical relevance. Focusing on the RAND Corporation, an American think tank with close relations to the armed forces, Dayé analyses the development of two techniques of prognosis, the Delphi technique and Political Gaming. Based on archival research and interviews, the chapters explore the history of this series of experiments to understand how contemporary social scientists conceived of one of the core categories of the Cold War, the expert, and uncover the systematic use of expert opinions to craft prognoses.This consideration of the expert’s role in Cold War society and what that can tell us about the role of the expert today will be of interest to students and scholars across the history of science, the sociology of knowledge, future studies, the history of the Cold War, social science methodology, and social policy.  About the Author Christian Dayé is Research Fellow at the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Unit of Graz University of Technology, Austria.