William M Epstein
Biographic Data
| ID | 155498 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William M Epstein |
| GIVEN NAMES | William M |
| FAMILY NAME | Epstein |
| SIGNATURE | EPSTEIN W M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 23 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Climate Change, Social Inequality, and Doom
A critical examination of how inequality and cultural inertia hinder meaningful climate action.The challenges of climate change, like so many issues today, are not evenly distributed across social and economic lines. In this sobering exploration of the interconnected crises of climate change and social inequality, William M. Epstein examines how entrenched cultural values and systemic inequities thwart meaningful climate action, driving humanity …
Spiritualism, Religion, and Other Romantic Quests for the Authentic Self
Chapter 4 explores the quest for the authentic self in illuminations of the true self, in theories of organizational leadership, and in other sorts of personal quests for the authentic soul. The national investment in romantic quests sustains the preferences for social efficiency, superstition, and quick authenticity. These preferences supplant serious material attempts to repair inequality and begin to explain the minimalism and the underlying a…
Year Up: Policy Romanticism, Democratic Populism, and Social Welfare in America
Chapter 5 describes, evaluates, and reinterprets the private sector social service program Year Up as a ceremony of social values rather than as a successful response to a social problem. The program is intended to provide poor minority urban youths access to the job market by offering short-term academic and skills training. Its claims to success are based on contracted evaluations that are not credible. In the end, Year Up embodies a mythic obl…
The Dilemma of American Social Welfare
In the current political climate of the U.S., there are noeasily apparent solutions to the social problems we face.William M. Epstein claims that people in need have been poorly served and misled by the American system of social welfare. This is one of those rare works emanating from a social welfare expert that does not offer easy placebos or simplistic claims based on more money.The Dilemma of American Social Welfare argues against the idea tha…
Empowerment as Ceremony
Many people in the United States are poor, lead marginal lives, and need jobs as well as basic services such as education, medical care, and housing. Multitudes in other parts of the world, in addition to being poor, are jailed, tortured, and killed for being members of the wrong ethnic group or expressing political opinions. Those who argue for empowerment claim it is a magic bullet. It can liberate the oppressed, largely through self-organizati…
The Romantic Retreat Is Not Club Med
“Feminist standpoint epistemology” is not a serious philosophy but a romantic evasion of the application of science to social services. There are numerous limitations to the application of the scientific method to the practice of social work and the social services. Nonetheless, a pragmatic approach to understanding social reality and the evaluation of social interventions is more desirable than feminist standpoint epistemology. Yet the romantic …
The Importance of Being Civil: The Struggle for Political Decency
Strict Slaves of Slogans: Response to “The Social Work Cartel”
The corruption of the social work enterprise is not simply episodic but systemic and long-standing including education, research, governance, and practice. Reform is unlikely since the constituency within the field and outside of it that wishes to change the situation is small and ineffective. The corruption of social work reflects the unfortunate social values of the nation that refuses to allocate sufficient resources to address deep social pro…
Romantic Social Work
Response bias in opinion polls and American social welfare
Response bias and notably response falsification undercut the usefulness of opinion polls in characterizing collective American attitudes toward social welfare. The attitudes polled in surveys such as the General Social Survey (GSS) and the National Election Studies (NSS) appear to be customarily sensitive, often evidencing very large amounts of response falsification that obscure the degree of consensus for America's bifurcated social welfare sy…
Cleavage in American Attitudes toward Social Welfare
Opinion polls probing both the narrow and broad senses of social welfare among Americans indicate hardly any substantial differences over crucial social sentiments among a variety of groups with at least theoretically divergent interests: rich and poor, men and women, blacks and whites, a variety of ethnic groups, union and nonunion households. The items mainly concern the provision of welfare to the poor through AFDC, now TANF, and Food Stamps b…
The futility of pragmatic reform: The Casey foundation in New York City
Children Who Could Have Been: The Legacy of Child Welfare in Wealthy America
William Epstein takes an unblinking look at the failure of public child welfare in America. The paltry response to children in need, Epstein contends, opens windows onto the nation s soul, revealing a profoundly disturbing lack of generosity in the face of deserving and needy children. Epstein analyzes in detail the decay of the child welfare system through the case histories of Natalie and Adam, two children who have spent their lives in and out…
Wasted: The Failure of the Child Welfare System and the Plight of America's Unwanted Children
Welfare in America: How Social Science Fails the Poor
Welfare in America is a scathing attack on the social scientists, policy makers, and politicians responsible for programs meant to help our nation's poorest citizens. William M. Epstein charges that most current social welfare programs are not held to credible standards in their design or their results. Rather than spending less on such research and programs, however, Epstein suggests we should spend much more, and do the job right. The American …
Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State
What money can't buy
Social science, child welfare, and family preservation: A failure of rationality in public policy
Books in review
Just a wooden horse
Passing into proverbs
Epstein Responds: The Pursuit of Credible Objectivity
Journal Article Epstein Responds: The Pursuit of Credible Objectivity Get access William M. Epstein William M. Epstein Associate Professor School of Social Work, University of Nevada at Las Vegas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Work Research, Volume 18, Issue 1, March 1994, Pages 62–63, https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/18.1.62 Published: 01 March 1994
British moralities/Hong Kong realities
The dilemma of American social welfare
In the current political climate of the United States, there are no easily apparent solutions to the monumental social problems we face. The Los Angeles riots of 1992 may have been a taste of continuing social turmoil. Epstein claims that people in need are poorly served and misled by the American system of social welfare. This is one of those rare works emanating from a social welfare expert that does not offer easy placebos or simplistic claims…
Professionalization of social work: The American experience
(1992). Professionalization of social work: The American experience. The Social Science Journal: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 153-166
Science and Social Work
Social work research has failed to comply with a scientific standard. Because of this failure, practice is indeterminate and the field is deprived of valid demonstrations of its ability to cure, prevent, or rehabilitate. Social work's difficulties in complying with a scientific standard may not be able to be resolved because of inherent problems of social work practice. It is suggested that a scientific standard is inappropriate for social work a…
Social science, child welfare, and family preservation: A failure of rationality in public policy
Confirmational Response Bias Among Social Work Journals
This article reports the results of a study of confirmational response bias among social work journals. A contrived research paper with positive findings and its negative mirror image were submitted to two different groups of social work journals and to two comparison groups of journals outside social work. The quantitative results, suggesting bias, are tentative; but the qualitative findings based upon an analysis of the referee comments are cle…
Empowerment as Ceremony
Many people in the United States are poor, lead marginal lives, and need jobs as well as basic services such as education, medical care, and housing. Multitudes in other parts of the world, in addition to being poor, are jailed, tortured, and killed for being members of the wrong ethnic group or expressing political opinions. Those who argue for empowerment claim it is a magic bullet. It can liberate the oppressed, largely through self-organizati…
Strict Slaves of Slogans: Response to “The Social Work Cartel”
The corruption of the social work enterprise is not simply episodic but systemic and long-standing including education, research, governance, and practice. Reform is unlikely since the constituency within the field and outside of it that wishes to change the situation is small and ineffective. The corruption of social work reflects the unfortunate social values of the nation that refuses to allocate sufficient resources to address deep social pro…
Response bias in opinion polls and American social welfare
Response bias and notably response falsification undercut the usefulness of opinion polls in characterizing collective American attitudes toward social welfare. The attitudes polled in surveys such as the General Social Survey (GSS) and the National Election Studies (NSS) appear to be customarily sensitive, often evidencing very large amounts of response falsification that obscure the degree of consensus for America's bifurcated social welfare sy…
The Obligation of Intellectuals
The controversy surrounding Confirmational Response Bias Among Social Work Journals (CRB; Epstein 1990) stems from its critical toneespecially in earlier drafts, its unflattering findings, and its use of deception to study journal publication processes. If the tone of CRB had rung a less challenging note; if its qualitative analysis had been summed up as a whispered reminder that social work referees might profit from greater attention to their c…
Romantic Social Work
The futility of pragmatic reform: The Casey foundation in New York City
Professionalization of social work: The American experience
(1992). Professionalization of social work: The American experience. The Social Science Journal: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 153-166
Rational claims to effectiveness in social work's critical literature
Social work's preoccupation with psychotherapeutics and the enormous pressure to prove the field's outcome effectiveness on scientific grounds are tied into the metaphor of “helping.” Yet social work's outcome studies and its discussion of those studies in its critical literature are neither scientifically credible nor usually coherent in the profound sense of science. This article reviews social work's outcome studies up to 1983 and discusses th…
Research Biases
Journal Article Research Biases Get access William M. Epstein William M. Epstein School of Social Work, State University of New York, at Buffalo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Work, Volume 28, Issue 1, January-February 1983, Pages 77–78, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/28.1.77 Published: 01 January 1983
Research Biases
Journal Article Research Biases Get access William M. Epstein William M. Epstein School of Social Work, State University of New York, at Buffalo Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Work, Volume 28, Issue 1, January-February 1983, Pages 77–78, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/28.1.77 Published: 01 January 1983
Get Thee to a Shelter
Psychotherapy and surrogate care, the two basic strategies for providing services to battered women, are criticized against outcome evidence of their reliability and efficacy. Surrogate care is shown to be the more desirable service approach. Some implications of this conclusion for the helping professions are enumerated
Science and Social Work
Social work research has failed to comply with a scientific standard. Because of this failure, practice is indeterminate and the field is deprived of valid demonstrations of its ability to cure, prevent, or rehabilitate. Social work's difficulties in complying with a scientific standard may not be able to be resolved because of inherent problems of social work practice. It is suggested that a scientific standard is inappropriate for social work a…
Family Therapy: Reply
Family Therapy: Reply William M. Epstein William M. Epstein Integrated Mental Health, Inc.Rochester, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Work, Volume 32, Issue 1, January-February 1987, Page 96, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/32.1.96-a Published: 01 January 1987
Our Town: A Case Study of Ideology and the Private Social Welfare Sector
This case study explores the relationship between ideology and the performance of the voluntary social welfare sector in Western New York. Data were collected from the directors of 22 of the largest and most important voluntary social welfare agencies relating to their own social attitudes and those of their boards. The common expression of similar agency attitudes toward a variety of social policies were in narrow conformity with the conservativ…
Studying Journal Editors: The Worst Heresy
The sleeping sentinels of social work
Rational claims to effectiveness in social work's critical literature
Social work's preoccupation with psychotherapeutics and the enormous pressure to prove the field's outcome effectiveness on scientific grounds are tied into the metaphor of “helping.” Yet social work's outcome studies and its discussion of those studies in its critical literature are neither scientifically credible nor usually coherent in the profound sense of science. This article reviews social work's outcome studies up to 1983 and discusses th…
Confirmational Response Bias Among Social Work Journals
This article reports the results of a study of confirmational response bias among social work journals. A contrived research paper with positive findings and its negative mirror image were submitted to two different groups of social work journals and to two comparison groups of journals outside social work. The quantitative results, suggesting bias, are tentative; but the qualitative findings based upon an analysis of the referee comments are cle…
Ethics and Deception Methods
Journal Article Ethics and Deception Methods Get access William M. Epstein William M. Epstein The Chinese University of Hong Kong Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Work, Volume 35, Issue 6, November 1990, Page 571, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/35.6.571 Published: 01 November 1990
The Obligation of Intellectuals
The controversy surrounding Confirmational Response Bias Among Social Work Journals (CRB; Epstein 1990) stems from its critical toneespecially in earlier drafts, its unflattering findings, and its use of deception to study journal publication processes. If the tone of CRB had rung a less challenging note; if its qualitative analysis had been summed up as a whispered reminder that social work referees might profit from greater attention to their c…
Professionalization of social work: The American experience
(1992). Professionalization of social work: The American experience. The Social Science Journal: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 153-166
The dilemma of American social welfare
In the current political climate of the United States, there are no easily apparent solutions to the monumental social problems we face. The Los Angeles riots of 1992 may have been a taste of continuing social turmoil. Epstein claims that people in need are poorly served and misled by the American system of social welfare. This is one of those rare works emanating from a social welfare expert that does not offer easy placebos or simplistic claims…
Epstein Responds: The Pursuit of Credible Objectivity
Journal Article Epstein Responds: The Pursuit of Credible Objectivity Get access William M. Epstein William M. Epstein Associate Professor School of Social Work, University of Nevada at Las Vegas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Work Research, Volume 18, Issue 1, March 1994, Pages 62–63, https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/18.1.62 Published: 01 March 1994
British moralities/Hong Kong realities
Books in review
Just a wooden horse
Passing into proverbs
Social science, child welfare, and family preservation: A failure of rationality in public policy
What money can't buy
Wasted: The Failure of the Child Welfare System and the Plight of America's Unwanted Children
Welfare in America: How Social Science Fails the Poor
Welfare in America is a scathing attack on the social scientists, policy makers, and politicians responsible for programs meant to help our nation's poorest citizens. William M. Epstein charges that most current social welfare programs are not held to credible standards in their design or their results. Rather than spending less on such research and programs, however, Epstein suggests we should spend much more, and do the job right. The American …
Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State
Children Who Could Have Been: The Legacy of Child Welfare in Wealthy America
William Epstein takes an unblinking look at the failure of public child welfare in America. The paltry response to children in need, Epstein contends, opens windows onto the nation s soul, revealing a profoundly disturbing lack of generosity in the face of deserving and needy children. Epstein analyzes in detail the decay of the child welfare system through the case histories of Natalie and Adam, two children who have spent their lives in and out…
The futility of pragmatic reform: The Casey foundation in New York City
Political science (29 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Law (23 works) · Law (16 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Social Work Education and Practice (13 works) · Social Work (11 works) · Welfare (9 works) · Engineering (8 works) · Politics (8 works)