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In 1952, anti-Communist forces in Congress began investigating tax exempt foundations that were funding social science research. 1954 the Dodd Report to the Reece Committee was issued. The report attacked some of the most prestigious foundations in the country, including the Rockefeller Endowment and specifically targeted Kinsey’s research. The report claimed that these foundations were attempting to undermine the government through the kind of educational research they funded.

According to the Dodd Report:

In these fields the specialists, more often than not, seem to have been concerned with the production of empirical data and with its application. Principles and their truth or falsity seem to have concerned them very little.

As if this absence of concern for the truth was not enough of a threat, the Dodd Report went on to state that:

"the social scientist is gradually becoming dignified by the title "Social Engineer." This title implies that the objective viewpoint of the pure scientist is about to become obsolete in favor of techniques of control. It also suggests that our traditional concept of freedom as a function of natural and constitutional law has been abandoned."

To the Reece Committee, Kinsey was a dangerous social engineer whose work needed to be stopped. And the best way to stop him was to pressure the foundation that backed him. The need to keep minds under strict control, never to be challenged by independent research, drove the committee to guarantee that Kinsey – and those like him – could never conduct independent research again.