Research Limits

The bulk of knowledge attainable from research in general is limited to the kinds of questions that have been asked. In the social sciences, the questions that are being asked are the ones our culture permits us to ask. In this case, culture informs objectivity. If culture assumes that children are being harmed by something, then the questions for research become: "What groups of kids are being harmed the most? Who does the harm affect the most? Who/What is doing the harm? and What can be done to stop the harm from happening?" No one comes forth to pose the question: is the cultural assumption even right to begin with?

If the culture says that X, then research asks, "given X, how does X affect Y?" If it would be culturally inappropriate to question X, then X is not questioned.

However, the social sciences are not uniformly like this. There are numerous examples of research and researchers who have pushed boundaries and ultimately changed cultural perspectives to align more with the reality of the world, but notice it only seems to work that way with questions that, even if controversial, are still within the boundaries of acceptability. The level of attention a particular research question receives is proportional to its level of cultural acceptability. So given this, it's a wonder anyone can regard the social sciences without skepticism at the least. For instance, it seems obvious the increase in interest in questions about homosexuality outside the strict context of "pathological abnormality" has more to do with our culture's growing tolerance of the gay lifestyle than it does the researchers' objective "thirst for knowledge."

One question that seems to be outside the boundaries of our culture, and therefore shut off from objective investigation, is "when are children capable of giving meaningful consent?" This is because culture tells us they are never capable until they are [16, 17, 18, 21...pick a number]. Scientific investigation takes this as a given, and then asks "because we all know kids can not consent, how are they being harmed by X?" Who among us is brave enough to ask "is this man-made, superstitious, legal construct wrong about a child's objective ability to consent?"  Don't hold your breath.

Victimology research feeds off of cultural limitations.