Making social science useful.

This paper comments on that article "Sociology and political arithmetic: some principles of a new policy science," by Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H Halsey in this issue of "The British Journal of Sociology." Two key issues are addressed in a selective way. First, what is and what should be the role of social science, and sociology in particular, in informing policy making. Second, what is the wider role of social science in facilitating the democratic debate, and in holding policymakers to account. Too little social science research is directed at important issues Incentives in academia are not well aligned to achieving socially optimal goals, whether that be for inter-disciplinary working or policy influencing behavior.