The paper examines the relationship between social sciences and the
military-industrial complex in the United States of America during the Cold
War era. Based on the review of the most representative texts on this
problematique, the author?s main goal is to prove the plausibility of
critical view according to which the social sciences have been
instrumentalized during the Cold War by centers of power such as CIA and the
Pentagon in order to accomplish certain strategic goals. The main focus of
our interest is Project Camelot, an ambitous research program which was
canceled in the midst of the international scandal which erupted as a
consequence of the exposure of the project?s political nature. The first
part of the paper describes the Camelot controversy and the reaction of
social scientists, as well as the debate on ethical, epistemological,
political and practical implications of social scientific research, which
was triggered by the affair. The second part of the paper describes research
projects whose characterics are similar to those of Project Camelot, and the
author hypostasizes that the controversial project cannot be viewed as an
isolated case, but rather as a paradigmatic example of the Cold War social
science. The text pays special attention to the question of
sponsorship/sources of funding of social research, an issue whose scale and
importance is especially highlighted in the third section of the paper. The
concluding part points on the problem of militarization and
instrumentalisation of social sciences fifty years after Project Camelot,
while the emphasis is put on the necessity of maintaining the memory on the
worst cases of the abuse of behavioral expertise.
The great Project Camelot: Implications and repercussions of a controversy in social sciences