The social scientist is in a difficult, if not impossible position.On the one hand there is the temptation to see all of societyas one's autobiography writ large, surely not the path to general truth.On the other hand, there is the attempt to be general and objective by pretending that one knows nothing about the experience of being human, forcing the investigator to pretend that people usually know and tell the truth about important issues, when we all know from our own lives how impossible that is.

-Lewontin, Richard Charles
  'Sex, Lies, and Social Science', in the NewYork Review of Books, 20  Apr.