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Easy Sport: Research and Relevance
Author(s) -
Reuter Peter
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1979.tb01051.x
Subject(s) - commission , relevance (law) , politics , political science , point (geometry) , outcome (game theory) , public policy , public administration , public relations , sociology , law , economics , geometry , mathematics , mathematical economics
This paper is an analysis of the Final Report of the Commission on the Review of the National Policy Toward Gambling. After discussing the origins and political environment of the Commission, the paper focuses on the relationship between the Commission's recommendations and the results of its own research. The author argues that the research was used only where it fitted the Commission's views and was ignored where it did not. The paper concludes with a discussion of the structural factors that led to this outcome. Criticizing the banal and unsubstantiated policy views of public commissions is easy sport… I do so only to make a simple point: public commissions, on the record, have either made no use of social science… made some use but in ways irrelevant to its policy conclusions…, or made use of relevant but unconvincing research. (Wilson, 1978)