Lloyd S. Etheredge is a social scientist and teacher who does research and organizes projects for the development of rapid learning systems and to contribute fresh and creative thinking about domestic and international problems.
In the early 1990s, Lloyd Etheredge worked with Joshua Lederberg to develop projects for using the emerging global Internet to accelerate scientific innovation. Their work, supported by UNESCO, the World Health Organization, and the Richard Lounsbery and Sprint Foundations, created a prototype of regularly scheduled global Internet colloquia (for global health and to address emerging infectious diseases, organized by the School of Public Health at Yale) and was the basis for the Science Without Borders project at the New York Academy of Sciences and the global videocast system for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health (http://www.videocast.nih.gov).
Dr. Etheredge has made two original scientific contributions: 1.) To the study of international relations and learning in American foreign policy and its war/peace decisions (especially links to personality and a new, psychologically refined and predictive theory of hubris as a pre-learning baseline.) He also has contributed 2.) In domestic policy to an integrated behavioral science paradigm of hierarchical psychodrama as an explanatory theory of ideology, ideology-linked policy discourse and learning challenges. His paradigm makes several ideological truth claims testable; and it makes new, testable predictions of unrecognized brain mechanisms in societal problems (e.g., a social submission/followership syndrome - including effects on the endocrine system); it implies a new theory of political and economic participation and that faster, creative solutions to a range of societal problems may be possible.
Dr. Etheredge's scientific work also has developed Lasswell's (policy science) research program: 3.) To ground societal learning and public policy in an evolving multidisciplinary study of human nature. He has written scientific overviews of our cumulative learning about individual behavior (e.g., The Case of the Unreturned Cafeteria Trays); developed a new paradigm of hierarchical power/psychodrama and behavior (discussed above), and suggested lines of cross-disciplinary investigation for new neuroscience/public policy research programs ("Grand Challenges: Mapping the Brain-Mind Connection of Emotion and Politics" for the National Science Foundation.) Building the policy sciences vision he also has authored literature reviews and worked: 4.) To build a multidisciplinary scientific field for the study of government learning rates and the design of rapid learning systems, including the advance of health and other human rights and theories about intelligence and wisdom as achievements of both individuals and system design (e.g., "Wisdom and Public Policy" in A Handbook of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives, Sternberg and Jordan (Eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2005). For the conduct of 21st century international relations he has contributed a range of ideas for new lines of investigation, innovative theories, and improved research methods (e.g., content analysis tools in the public domain), modeling (e.g., forecasting behavior in complex, adaptive systems; political opportunity analysis, economic forecasting), and statistical analysis to the Behavioral Science and National Intelligence study for the Director of National Intelligence by the National Academy of Sciences, emphasizing the urgent need to understand and build system-level intelligence and wisdom to achieve US national goals and to shift resources to the public domain.
Dr. Etheredge chaired a working group on applications of Internet technology to accelerate international cooperation and policy development for the CSIS Reinventing Public Diplomacy project. He has contributed ideas to a Rapid Learning Health System project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; to a volume of strategic plans for international human rights (e.g., applications of emerging Internet technology); to a World Academy of Art & Science report to Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon surveying new ideas; to NSF strategic planning projects for the behavioral sciences; and to a CSIS project to build a (Smart Power) Global Health System.
Dr. Etheredge received his BA (Economics, 1968) from Oberlin College and his M.A. (International Relations), M. Phil (1972) and Ph. D. degrees (1974) in Political Science from Yale, with an NIMH Fellowship for interdisciplinary training in the Psychological Study of Politics. He was a faculty member at MIT for eight years and also has had regular or visiting faculty appointments at Yale, UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Public Policy, the Universities of Toronto and Manitoba, Swarthmore, Oberlin, and Mills Colleges, American University and Duke University. He has been an invited speaker at the Science Center (Berlin), Harvard, the U.S. Department of State's Open Forum, the World Bank, and other institutions. His administrative experience includes serving as Director of Graduate Studies for International Relations at Yale University, with responsibilities for recruitment, admissions, advising, and placement. He has been Ittelson Consultant to the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry and has served as a consultant or reviewer for (among others) the MacArthur Foundation, National Science Foundation, the University of California, Chicago, and MIT Presses, Canada Council, and many professional journals. He is a Founding Member of the International Society for Political Psychology and of the Society for the Policy Sciences. He was awarded a Fellowship to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1982 -1983 and was elected a Fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science in 2004. He received an award for graduate teaching from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Secretary's Distinguished Public Service Award from the U. S. Department of State.
Copies of Dr. Etheredge's papers and scientific publications are online at www.policyscience.net and www.policyscience.ws. Dr. Etheredge has written two books, A World of Men: the Private Sources of American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978) and a study of decision making and earlier non-learning across three return engagements and CIA interventions: Can Governments Learn? American Foreign Policy and Central American Revolutions (New York: Pergamon Press, 1985). He has edited two volumes of selected scientific papers by Ithiel de Sola Pool, (Politics in Wired Nations and Humane Politics and Methods of Inquiry) concerning the impact of new communications technologies on society and politics and research methods to build these lines of inquiry in the digital age. Pool thought that the creative potential of new digital age technologies would add an exciting dimension (i.e., beyond conventional ideology) for rapid progress and that content analysis (for example) could add to earlier traditions of the Humanities to support more humane, reality-connected, governments and decisions. Etheredge contributed a summary chapter, "What's Next? The Intellectual Legacy of Ithiel de Sola Pool," to the second volume.
April, 2011
For a copy of Dr. Etheredge's resume, Click here.
Dr. Etheredge is Project Director at the Policy Sciences Center Inc., a public foundation created at Yale Law School in 1948 by Harold Lasswell, Myres McDougal, and George Dession. It may be contacted c/o Prof. Michael Reisman, Chair, 127 Wall St., Room 322, P O. Box 208215, New Haven, CT 06520-8215, (203)-432-1993. URL: http://www.policyscience.net
Copies of Dr. Etheredge's papers and publications may be found at http://www.policyscience.net and www.policyscience.ws
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This page was last updated on April 14, 2011.