UNOFFICIAL ASPECTS OF A LIFE IN POLICY RESEARCH Leslie T Wilkins Research Professor, State University New York Cambridge, U.K. 1999 ABOUT THE AUTHOR The author has experience in both the `hard' and `soft' sciences. He has spent about half of his research career in England and half in the United States. He undertook sponsored research for two President's Commissions in the U.S. and for the Royal Commission on Taxation in the UK He has carried out research in the military, civil and academic settings. Quite early in his career(s) he had an ethical disagreement with an Air Chief Marshal about flying safety research. His R.A.F. commission ended forthwith. Later a disagreement with a Home Secretary on proposed new drugs laws led to his accepting a United Nations assignment in the Far East, after which he was invited to a chair at the University of California at Berkeley. This career also was somewhat turbulent and terminated when, as acting head of a department, he refused to be an informer as demanded by the Regents (Chaired at that time by Ronald Reagan). He was invited to the State University of New York at Albany and on retirement was awarded the title of Research Professor. He received early recognition with the award of the Francis Wood Memorial Prize of the Royal Statistical Society for his epidemiological study of deafness. Thereafter he received honours from several U.S. and international organisations. He officially retired in 1982 at 65 years of age and has since resided in Cambridge where he continues to do odd jobs in research. ii DEDICATION To my family and especially to my wife, Barbara, whose half-century of support extended even to the endorsement of my several protest resignations, though the cost to her was greater than to me. Printed posthumously by Leslie's widow and family and rededicated to his students everywhere. May 2001 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author and publishers thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material. Sheffield Telegraph fro Figure 3. Royal Statistical Society for Figure 4. Times Newspapers Ltd for Figure 6. San Francisco Chronicle for Figure 8. Permission was sought from the Evening Standard for Figure 2 and the New York Times for Figure 10 and no adverse reply was forthcoming. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR............................................................................................................................................................. ii DEDICATION ...............................................................................................................................................................................iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.............................................................................................................................................................3 PREAMBLE........................................................................................................................................................................................4 INTRODUCTION: OUTLINE AND RESERVATIONS .................................................................................................8 CHAPTER ONE: EARLY YEARS. Education, into employment; pre-war village life; to Folland Aircraft; R.A.F.; marriage; accident research at Air Ministry; founding of Operational Research Club............................................................................................ 10 CHAPTER TWO: ENGINEER BECOMES SOCIAL SCIENTIST Wartime Social Survey; research management; demand for medals estimated ................................................ 34 CHAPTER THREE: POST-WAR SOCIAL SURVEY Interviewer reliability; demand forecasting; deafness study; Royal Statistical Society connection; notes on the history of British Criminology; Sir George Benson and the Borstal project ....................................... 46 CHAPTER FOUR: HOME OFFICE DAYS First invitation to US; the Carlisle Scheme; the Cambridge Institute; Eel Pie Island and Arthur Chisnell; victim studies and Stephen Schafer; second visit to US; founding of British Criminology Society; drugs and leaks......................................................................................................................................................................................... 77 CHAPTER FIVE: THE SCOTTISH EXPERIENCE: First venture into university life..........................................................................................................................................111 CHAPTER SIX: THE JAPANESE -- UNITED NATIONS EXPERIENCE Impressions of Tokyo culture; the importance of role; tolerance of ambiguity; obligation etc................115 CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BERKELEY EXPERIENCE Campus conditions and local culture; university structure and administration; I become Acting Dean; academic life and its disturbances, tear gassing, the Vietnam war, the People's Park etc ...........................136 CHAPTER EIGHT: UPSTATE NEW YORK Research money and management difficulties; the Albany Research Centre is conceived; introduction of computers; the Parole Board and George Reed; collaborative decision research, bonding sessions and information overload; disparity and reassessment; choice of model; the decision approach emerges, a learning system; the idea of Guidelines for sentencing; sabbaticals in Australia and British Columbia. ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................159 CHAPTER NINE: POST RETIREMENT. Reorientation; UN conference on Situational Crime.................................................................................................201 CHAPTER TEN: TAIL PIECE Thoughts on ethics, stucture and error, amongst other things.............................................................................211 APPENDIX 1: Libel is Ignored.............................................................................................................................................224 APPENDIX 2: Bibliography...................................................................................................................................................227 PREAMBLE This book is best read as two books intertwined. The time-line runs from the 1933 depression until the present and tells of significant episodes of policy advice alongside aspects of personal history. Many stories may be seen either as analogies deployed in applied research models or simply as anecdotes. Governments, major industries and even charitable organisations have recourse to policy advisers: persons that the popular press refer to as the “faceless ones”. The activities of these persons have an impact on all of us, yet to the average citizen they remain a somewhat mysterious army. They claim all kinds of expertise and experience yet their opinions are seldom made directly public. The press reports, not the advice given, but the decisions made by the managers, politicians or administrators. Indeed it is seldom that the information upon which policy decisions are based is itself made public. Much policy research tends to be associated with methods termed “think tanks”, “focus groups” and the dissemination of the outcome by “spin doctors”. The popular press comment usually gives the public a poor impression of these techniques. This viewpoint may occasionally be both substantially and dramatically justified. However, justified or not, it applies only to a small proportion of the available techniques, mainly those which, superficially, do not appear to require complex analysis. The main misunderstandings arise with those research techniques which are ‘person orientated’ rather than ‘machine orientated’. Of course, the fact that the public are misinformed or uninformed about almost the whole field of policy research is not particularly important: the public are misinformed on many other things of more significance -- but it does matter to the recruitment of staff. If graduates in the appropriate disciplines are misinformed, both parties and the public they serve will be disadvantaged.1 In this book I will attempt to provide the would-be recruit to policy research with a different perspective than the background which might be obtained by studying the available research reports.2 In addition to shedding some light on the background of an adviser’s job in Whitehall and Washington, my purpose is to provide an unorthodox picture of the kind of lifestyle which may be expected by graduates or others who choose to work in policy research; though this is no occupational guide. 1 I am indebted to a few students at the Institute of Criminology, Cambridge, who were aware of this. Nick Baylis with the support of Dr. Loraine Gelsthorpe of the Institute set up a dinner party for my wife and myself on the understanding that I would discuss the background to some of the aspects of my research career. Their challenge was not only a major stimulus to this writing but gave me an insight into the philosophy underlying the sundry methods I had deployed. 2 The New Scientist in an editorial (2nd Aug 1997 -- 2093) pointed out the deficiency of scientific papers as a historical source and commended a publication by Sandia Laboratory scientists along much the same lines as I now propose. 4 A Historical Note: Policy Research Types? A frequently quoted, useful and simple classification of professions proposes three major categories, namely those that are