I could believe that intensive research can be useful, but from the cases I have seen of cost-benefit analysis or city planning actually being used, no I don't like those. Cost-benefit analysis (as actually used by business) seems to leave out any strategic advantage that cannot be quantified, and city planning (as actually practiced by cities) seems to be responsible for a lot of what went wrong in the last half of the 20th century in America's cities.

Of course, it could well be that the tools of social scientists were being mishandled by amatuers; I could pretty easily believe that. But as examples, those two both look to me to be net negatives.