The Stupidity of Social Science
I come from the field of criminology via anthropology, and as primarily an academic, I can safely say there are lots of stupid things that the social sciences do which make it hard to "translate" into actionable or practical application. One is the tendency to typologize or come up with names for things. This is usually either an exercise in semantics or some kind of ego trip in which the academic hopes the name will catch on and they will be forever cited in the literature because, after all, most literature reviews go like this: "Jones et al. remark that there are three types... whereas Smith holds the following four types exist...." Two is the deliberate fascination with theory building, an exercise devoted mainly to the development of "puzzles" for other academics to work on; i.e., providing the "stuff" or starting points for theses and dissertations. Most of this theory-testing only produces R-squares of .20 or .30 at best, which means a large percentage of known factors remain unknown. That's what makes social science a soft science, I suppose. We aren't dealing with close tolerances or things with 999.99% certainty like chemistry. Yet, there are some good practical applications derived from the occasional theoretical insight. Most of these are obtained by luck or serendipity rather than by design. Some are substantive, and the better ones involve being a polymath rather than toiling in the theory-practice divide.
Human Terrain Systemic Failures
As a former FAO I am a believer in cultural intelligence and as an anthro minor, history major, I would have to class myself with the social science crowd.
I was and still am a believer in the concept of a dedicated human terrain capability. But I will say after a year as the POLAD in MND-B, the human terrain capablity never was applied in anything near to what it advertised.
There were bright, even brilliant spots on the human terrain teams. Some were antthropologists, most were not. What was lacking was a system to direct and capture relevant information based on the CCIR, not on a whimsy of a social scientist who felt that the Iraqis were not really happy having us there. Gee, who knew? The same fellow wanted to take the summer off because Baghdad was hot.
There were too many like him and not enough of the brilliant ones. None of them really got the concept of telling the commander what he needed to know versus telling him what they found to be "interesting" on any given day.
I again say that the concept is sound but its fielding was done so haphazardly that it left commanders and staffs puzzled on how to best integrate these teams. When those in the system don't have a system to begin with, integrating that system into military planning is systemically doomed to failure.
Best
Tom