Science Is not Innocent

This week, we had a series of lectures with what you might describe as a postmodern pseudo-marxist professor. I will not disclose any further information about him as I actually like the guy, but in one of the breaks between lectures we came upon the topic of objective science. I presented my view, that ethics and research should be held separate, and he responded with what amounted to the question: "Are you really so naive? Do you really think science is innocent?"

We didn't get much more time to talk before the lecture had to continue, and I don't believe I got the opportunity to make my answer clear. It is not that I think science is innocent, but rather that I think to characterize the scientific project to understand the world for what it is as the kind of thing that can even be innocent or guilty is a category error. For the unfamiliar, a category error entails the attribution of qualities of one type of thing to another - simply put, something being categorized as something which it is not. The purpose of this blog is to argue this point.

"Science" is not an agent. It does not make decisions. It is a process; One that people can opt to partake in by doing science (which is to say; contributing to the development of an intersubjectively viable understanding of our surroundings by carefully conducting experimental research, theorizing, studies, as well as criticism of findings/theories). The aim of science is, as noted above, to understand the world - reality. (The appeal of understanding reality should be obvious: The better we understand reality the less likely is it that our informed decisions will lead to undesired outcomes.) The question then, is if a process can be guilty. 

Just writing that previous sentence felt absurd. While an action - a process - might be indicative of guilt or innocence, those remain attributes of the agents undertaking the actions. Seen this way, the only way science itself could be guilty (i.e. not innocent) is if it was impossible to do science without doing something unjustifiable, leaving professors like my lecturer in a weird spot insofar as they've earned their position by doing science. Alternatively, it isn't in science that the problem lies.

One might counter that science isn't a process but rather an ideal - let's say a false one - that people either a) are naively tricked into pursuing (like me, hypothetically) by machiavellian agents or b) is engineered in such a fashion that any pursuit of it that would be accepted as legitimate by the powerful would support their power. The latter resembles the marxist view of the superstructure (which is worthy of critique in its own right for being all-encompassing, cynical, underestimating the role of individual interpretations and evolved psychological frameworks, and for relying on unfalsifiable notions of false consciousness and alienation that even adherents of won't present accounts of without logical leaps to name a few), and might be the basic perspective from which the accusation arises. While it might be rejected for its thorough lack of scientific rigour (even while commended for its ambition), that approach only devolves into name calling, as such criticisms rely on the things this perspective in effect rejects. Instead, I will contend that even if we assume science to be a false ideal of this kind and not a process, the guilt rests with the people who set it up, not with the pursuit of it (and in any case, benefit=/guilt, so alternative explanations will need to be excluded for it to pass the test of the presumption of innocence).

We return to the category of things that can, colloquially, be guilty or innocent: Agents. People use science like they use everything else; both for themselves and for others. In the scientific endeavour, it is well recognized that the science is never settled; It is always a work in progress; There are always more factors left uninvestigated. It is a project of approximation, constantly striving to get as close to the truth of the matter as possible, always open to the possibility that an undiscovered effect might have given the spurious appearance of another in a given inquiry. While recognized in science, it is less so in social matters like politics, where decisions frequently need to be made, and the scientific canon has to be relied upon as it is rather than as it would be if we understood things properly. When scientific findings leave the realm of science, they'll be used to bolster one perspective or another, regardless of whether the person who adapts it to politics understands what the findings were, the theories surrounding it or anything else of relevance. There's nothing unusual about this use of science, but it should be noted that it isn't science that does something wrong when its findings are used poorly. Technically speaking, it isn't even science that is being used, but its findings. And once again, it is used by agents, be they guilty or innocent.

It is not lost on me that theories like the theory of evolution by natural selection (which I'm fond of myself) have been used to justify ethical positions that are widely recognized as abhorrent today. This is not just because the people who appealed to it, like with other appeals to science, used it maliciously or simply misunderstood it, but because people have seen examples of where their logic might end, and have reasoned along these lines: "Anything that leads to this is wrong." Indeed, this has led to a vilification of the theory of natural selection, perhaps particularly in the humanities (which I'm personally aware of after having explained what professors got wrong about it on two completely separate occasions). To bring this back, appeals to scientific theories or findings of this kind are still not science itself, but rather a very natural way of relating to the scientific project that can lead off cliffs if not handled carefully. The idea that in principle the most fit survive has little to no ethical implications before we assert that "we know what is fit forever, and it's only one thing". (The former assertion has astronomically low odds of being correct for a given instance and the latter is simply wrong, as fitness is relative to the totality of the environment, including other people and even beliefs.) Once that is asserted, appeals to it can justify racism and similar heuristic errors (and consequent actions). The guilt here lies on the arrogant people who make these assertions, not on the theory they fail to comprehend. No doubt similar conclusions would be reached if one were to consider other theories and findings, like ones regarding IQ and differing normal distributions between populations.

It should be noted that what secures the amorality of the scientific project is that it limits itself to being descriptive. Delving into the realm of normative statements cannot be done without involving beliefs/values that we're fully capable of disagreeing on, and while they might be useful to people of shared beliefs or for people who'd like to understand your perspective, it also means that insofar as you're appealing to science in support of your beliefs/values with your work, your work is extra vulnerable to a number of very human biases of exactly the kind that science posits get in the way of understanding the world. It easily leads to leaps of logic that need to be challenged by other people due to being too close to their author's heart. This is not to say that Critical Theories (aiming to judge the world in relation to an envisioned utopia and in some way move it in that direction) have no place in the humanities or - more specifically - in ethics, which in turn has a place in most discussions of methodology and perhaps in conclusions, but that the presumptions such theories make (among them that their utopia is a valid standard for comparison) warrant keeping them separate from the scientific project in the interest of actually understanding the world to the best of our collective ability. Failing to understand things to the best of our ability doesn't help anyone accomplish anything (and this is a real danger when people bring their normative beliefs and dearly held assumptions in without critically evaluating them as in the context of Critical Theories). Regardless, our understanding of the world and probabilities only actually matter to consequentialist ethics (and hypothetical imperatives), whereas deontological ethics would say the same regardless of what science says.

Upholding science as the source of knowledge and values, otherwise known as scientism, is not the same as seeing the scientific process as our best bet for approximating the truth of our world. Scientism, commonly associated with logical positivism, was characteristic of an optimism regarding science that post-positivists (the baseline position of modern researchers) don't share. Believers in scientism believe science can answer everything. Post-positivists don't even believe that science can provide final answers, but they maintain that carefully conducted investigations are our best bet at pursuing the truth, which usually involves attempts at disproving hypotheses. It should therefore be said that while scientism generally captures the misuse of science, it does not reflect on science itself, but rather on the people who believe that appeals to science end arguments on ethical matters. This is important to be aware of, as most criticisms of science speak as if unaware that their criticisms have been heard, evaluated, and used to solidify a more defensible position. To bring this point home, the aforementioned lecturer (a professor) discussed the opposing viewpoints of positivism and interpretivism, expressed how he favored interpretivism, and when I asked him if he was going to bring up post-positivism at all, he told me that he had never heard of it(!). Thus, both his critique of positivism as one of two perspectives and his favor for interpretivism are simply outdated.

This is of course because science is a self-correcting process. Inasmuch as they are scientists, scientists want to understand the world. It has been recognized that having several pairs of educated eyes look over your findings and theorizing with a critical eye, frequently uncovers weaknesses that the individual scientist was simply unaware of. Once found, such weaknesses are amended to the best of the collective ability of scientists who know about them in the pursuit of investigations that don't make the same mistakes. This is but one kind of self-correction that takes place in the scientific endeavour, and the consequence of them all taken together is that science moderates itself to the point where critiques will become outdated, even if they had a point at one point in time (like the postmodernists rejecting positivism as if it was science as such). These corrections happen on logical grounds; moralistic criticisms only apply to scientists who share the moral concerns, and in any case, it doesn't change the data unless the scientist compromises it to that end, in which case the data no longer contributes to the scientific canon except through lies.

Finally, I will say something about rhetoric. A rhetorical evaluation of the question my lecturer presented in contrast to the scientific project uncovers some interesting points:

In rough terms, science relies on two things: Trust (which might be generalized into Ethos), and Logos. Logos is the source of the data, and Trust is the basis for further research. Implying naiveté while asking if you think science is innocent is an emotional appeal coupled with an appeal to one's greater experience. Thus, it relies on Ethos and Pathos to insinuate that those with a better understanding are suspicious of science due to its track record of (as argued above: misattributed) guilt. It only refers to Logos - the actual basis of science - through the Ethos of the would-be judges. Considering how salient moral judgments are to us as a species, the emotional appeal might make the category error easy to miss in the moment, but it does not change its nature. It remains unclear if the category error is a strategic sleight of hand that has been passed along from a knowing source or the product of an accidental equivocation of different things that has gone unnoticed since its (likely marxist) conception. However, if it was strategic, it would be a clever way to approach it - at once diminishing the defender of science while suggesting in moral language that there's something (unspecified) that is wrong with it.

As a matter of fact, the reason to strive to keep ethics and science separate is precisely that we are not being naive. It's a matter of trying to account for our own biases to improve the quality of our scientific research, following from a shared belief that it is possible to be wrong. To not distinguish between ethical/political stances and scientific inquiry in effect either endorses the scientism of using science as a battering ram in discussions of what ought to be done, or it tries to take advantage of the scientism of the audience to push an agenda. In both applications it is dishonest, and has no place in the scientific process, having reduced science to a means of overriding conversations that should be had for their own sake. Thus, the emotional appeal in my lecturer's rhetorical question gets it exactly backwards.

Proper scientific investigations lay the groundwork for any ethical conversation. Little can be said of what is right or wrong in the moral sense without a shared understanding of what the case is. Without science, then, ethics is limited to hypotheticals. To treat one's own ethical beliefs as part of one's scientific findings is to cheat the distinction between is and ought while simultaneously corrupting the data. Politics cannot be allowed to determine the outcomes of the scientific process. Science can't be made into a mere function of power without the people who treat it that way giving up on understanding the world wholesale, all but guaranteeing that they won't accomplish what they want long-term (Lysenko is a great example of this). The same is true for ethics, if more subtly. Science informs the application of ethics and politics. Ethics (specifically) might in turn limit what science can investigate, but not what the investigations that are permitted find, and this relationship is overturned only at great risk, with no actual gain. Ethics can't tell us what exists, only what to do about it. Science can't tell us what to do about something, only whether said something is what we thought it was.

As I said at the beginning of this blog, I actually like the lecturer in question, so I don't want to think it was a strategic sleight of hand. I choose to hope it is an honest mistake, but I maintain that science is not the kind of thing that can be guilty or innocent. Unlike the people who appeal to it or in some other way use it, science is not innocent, but not guilty either.