[ebiester]

The social sciences are to business as the hard sciences are to engineering. The theories of persuasion that came out of communications and social psychology departments revolutionized marketing. The Likert scale was developed by a psychologist, and is one of the foundations of all surveys.

Much of what we think about "big data" and applied statistics were pioneered in Sociology departments.

Anthropolology informed how businesses do intercultural communication. I know a professor who did a side project for a multinational about connotations based on color and imagery in their products and how a particular culture would relate.

And I know for a fact that the CIA hires out of regional studies departments. So yes, the government is paying people trained in the social sciences a lot of money to figure out what will "happen next" in the Middle East..