Perhaps one of the most persistent myths in science—one that also pervades public perception of science—is that it provides a value-free method to arrive at objective Truth, with a big ‘T’. This myth is so persistent that we seldom question it within science. Perhaps it is even taboo to question it. 

This is illustrated, for instance, when research is published that promotes racist or (cis¹)sexist ideas, policies, or technologies.² When such research is met with outrage from inside and outside science, many people object that it should only be debated on ‘objective’ or ‘methodological’ grounds, not on ‘values’. Why is this?

The (mistaken) idea seems to be that any hypothesis—no matter how bigoted—can be safely postulated and tested because the ‘scientific method’ weeds out untruths and leave the truths stand. This, however, overlooks two important false assumptions: that hypotheses themselves are value neutral, and that we have unlimited resources to debunk misconceived ideas.³ 

For instance, without the possibility to object to “scientific” racism⁴, there will always be another scientist keen on testing the hypothesis that certain ‘races’ have fewer IQ points that others⁵ (while it is known that IQ is a culturally biased measure and the concept of ‘race’ has no scientific basis). Debunking such pseudoscience takes massively more energy than it takes to thoughtlessly produce it. Moreover, the hard work typically will fall on the shoulders of people most affected by such discriminatory research, further amplifying the harm done. 

Why do many scientists want to uphold the myth? In part it may be naivety and a lack of training in the history and philosophy of science. In part it may also be fear that otherwise the public will not accept the authority of scientists on important issues such a vaccination or climate change. Whichever the case, I think that upholding the myth is detrimental to building and disseminating scientific knowledge. 

I believe the only way to counter scientific misinformation is for people—scientists and public alike—to understand and acknowledge science for what it really is (or should be): ideally, the thoughtful production of knowledge by specialized domain experts who are not afraid to question their own perspectives and biases. 

by Iris van Rooij

* This text was written while I was at Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences during my stay as a Distinguished Lorentz Fellow 2020-2021. A recent conversation reminded me of it, and I decided to make it public to facilitate sharing it.

Further reading

The points in this short blog are not new. For anyone with knowledge of the history of science (including scientism) they may be obvious. If you are interested in reading more, here some papers that I recommend:

• Birhane, A. & Guest, O. (2021). Towards Decolonising Computational Sciences. Women, Gender & Research.
• Dupree, C. H., & Kraus, M. W. (2022). Psychological science is not race neutral. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
• Guest, O. (2024). What Makes a Good Theory, and How Do We make a Theory Good? Computational Brain & Behavior.
• Prather, R. W., Benitez, V. L., Brooks, L. K., Dancy, C. L., Dilworth‐Bart, J., Dutra, N. B., Faison, O., Figueroa, M., Holden L. R., Johnson C., Medrano, J., Miller-Cotto, D., Matthews P. G., Manly, J. J., & Thomas, A. K. (2022). What can Cognitive Science do for people? Cognitive Science.
• Remedios, J. D. (2022). Psychology must grapple with Whiteness. Nature Reviews Psychology.
• Spanton, R. W. & Guest, O. (2022). Measuring Trustworthiness or Automating Physiognomy? A Comment on Safra, Chevallier, Grèzes, and Baumard (2020). arXiv.

Let me close with an always pertinent quote from Toni Morrison.

“The very serious function of racism … is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary.”

Toni Morrison, Portland State University, 1975

Footnotes

1. See e.g. the open letter Call for eNeuro to retract ‘gender dysphoria’ theory paper and the blogpost Dear Neuroscience: Stop Trying to “Fix” Diversity. ↩︎
2. See e.g. Be careful with mixing psychology and AI. ↩︎
3. See also Brandolini’s law. ↩︎
4. See e.g. Apology to People of Color for APA’s Role in Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Human Hierarchy in U.S. ↩︎
5. See e.g. Retraction of Clark et al. (2020) and Editorial by Editor-in-Chief Patricia Bauer in the journal Psychological Science. ↩︎

Credit

Banner image by Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay.