SUPPORT FROM PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY 



better position to take risks. In some fields these agencies now 

 have so much money that they are almost forced to gamble 

 with some of it. 



But let us return to the first type of boldness, the courage 

 to back people with ideas which are upsetting or frightening 

 to the general public or some vested interest. Although the 

 opportunities for exercising such courage are now rare in 

 natural science, there are still plenty of them in the social 

 sciences. And the situation is certainly made no easier by the 

 fact that most projects dealing with the behavior of man require 

 the second kind of boldness too. For it is undeniable that many 

 original investigations in this area do not meet all the method- 

 ological criteria one can think up. Freud pretty much dreamed 

 up his own method and no one even today is quite sure of its 

 validity; Kinsey, who at least confined himself much more 

 completely to the scientifically respectable act of counting 

 events in a presumably real world, was vulnerable in his sam- 

 pling procedures and very likely overrated the validity of his 

 interviewing methods; the behaviorist Watson obviously under- 

 rated the importance of genetic factors. And so it goes, until 

 those who for one reason or another have hoped to do something 

 to better our knowledge of our own behavior wonder whether 

 we are forever doomed to finding that the important investiga- 

 tions are unsound and the sound ones unimportant. 



Here at least is a real opportunity for boldness. For some 

 time to come government will have special difficulties in spon- 

 soring research which is likely to challenge long-cherished 

 beliefs about the ordering of behavior. Private philanthropy 

 should in theory at least be able to find the courage to defend 

 the right to ask questions and to stick by the questioners while 

 they flounder around hunting for the appropriate techniques. 

 In order to do this properly, the foundations and indeed many 

 of the researchers themselves should be encouraged to put their 



±4S 



