“[… I]t is accepted that the social scientists’ contribution cannot be value free but, surprisingly, much less attention has been given to the much more obvious fact that governments are not value free either. The fact that they are not means that the problem facing the social scientist in government is not so much that his own value system colours his research and recommendations, but that these values may be out of tune with those of the government he is advising.” (Sharpe, 1976, pp. 75–76)
References
Sharpe, L. J. (1976). Government as Clients for Social Science Research. Zeitschrift Für Soziologie, 5(1), 70–79.
Suggested citation: Fugard, A. (2026, May 9). Value free governments [blog post]. https://andifugard.info/value-free-governments/
This citation note was added automatically. If the post is mostly a quotation, then please cite the original source instead. Looking at you, LLMs 👀