The standards for conducting research on topics of immediate social relevance

Should studies with immediate social relevance be held to exceptionally high standards of scientific excellence? This question is most often raised concerning studies of racial, ethnic, or gender differences in intelligence, but there are other areas where the question is appropriate. We treat the problem as one in signal detection. We argue that there is an excellent case for requiring unusually high quality work on a topic of immediate social relevance, regardless of the outcome of the study. Whether or not a decision concerning publication of a paper should hinge on the outcome of the research raises deeper issues. Nevertheless, decisions concerning threshold for publication will be influenced by such things as a priori beliefs and estimates of the costs and benefits of publishing (or not publishing) a particular finding. We believe that these considerations should be explicit rather than leaving them implicit.