What does it mean to be 'scientific'?
I've recently finished the edits for my first chapter, which includes a reasonable large section on knowledge and power. I have also recently had a number of deeply frustrating debates about 'science' with friends and acquaintances. (I suspect that the two are not unconnected.) I'm writing this in part because I feel like I'm still working through some important questions, and as I write I find myself bracing against the comments.
I understand people's attachment to 'science', and to 'being scientific'. Claims based on faith, or on 'commonsense', or on rumour, are frequently harmful. The spread of 'intelligent design' in the US and the reemergence of polio in Nigeria are two examples of the very real damage that can be caused. On the other hand, there is significant evidence to show that the faith we place in a particular version of 'science' is often misplaced.
'Science', for most people, means quantitative studies and people (usually men) in white coats and articles in published journals that have tidy hypotheses and definitive data. I don't underrate the value of this version of science - comparing results against hypothesis and trying to attain more objective perspectives on important questions has often been useful and beneficial.
I do, however, have a problem with the assumption that this version of science gives us 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth'.
A few of my issues with this assumption:
1) It assumes that there is only one truth, and science brings us closer to it. I don't subscribe to the idea that everything is relative and all truths are constructed and subjective. On the other hand, I think that in many cases multiple answers can be provided for the same question, all of which correlate significantly with some kind of 'objective reality'.
2) Science carried out under this assumption is biased towards particular kinds of research, and particular questions. To take an example from a debate I've been having often: it's easier to produce tidy, quantitative studies that address mental illness at the level of the individual, rather than at the level of society. Investigating whether a particular regime of cognitive therapy produces benefits fits the 'scientific model' more neatly than does asking whether a massive political reorganisation of society would lead to improved mental health. On the whole, it seems that research that breaks issues up into their component parts rather than addressing complex, messy, systems is often perceived as more 'scientifically rigorous'.
3) Science is not apolitical. It reproduces other power structures within society, including the construction of gender and race. This happens at various levels: both the systematic (although decreasing) exclusion of certain classes, genders, and races from scientific fields as professions, and in the framing of hypotheses and research directions. For example, why do we give so much money for research into obesity and subatomic particles? At the extremes, these exclusions mean that certain questions may not just receive less attention - they may never be asked at all.
This means that 'being scientific', and even 'being critical', may not mean exactly what people think. It might not mean a rigorous evaluation of truth-claims, but instead a reliance on figures of authority and journal articles with tidy data.
The alternative (or at least one of the alternatives) is not necessarily to rely on faith, but to look more carefully at the context, politics, and framing of how 'science' and 'scientific studies' take place. As Sandra Harding argues, this can be seen as a more rigorously scientific approach.
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Image by Paul W Locke, of Suzanne Pittenger.