A third way for science in society
Maxine Clarke
Friday, 27 February 2009 13:08 UTC
Scientists have been too dogmatic about scientific truth and sociologists have fostered too much scepticism — social scientists must now elect to put science back at the core of society, says Harry Collins, director of the Centre for the Study of Knowledge Expertise Science at Cardiff University, UK, in the 5 March edition of Nature (458, 30; 2009 – free to access online for a week). Prof Collins identifies three waves in the history of social science attitutes to scientific research: first, an attempt to understand and interpret it; second, scepticism about it; and third – well, third is what he says social scientists must now do – work out what is right about science, not just what is wrong. He writes:
This third wave will be resisted. Post-modernists have become comfortable in their cocoon of cynicism. And some natural scientists have become too fond of describing their work as godlike. Others are ready to offer simple-minded criticisms of deeply held beliefs. But the third wave is needed to put science back in its proper place…..
Science’s findings are to be preferred over religion’s revealed truths, and are braver than the logic of scepticism, but they are not certain. They are a better grounding for society precisely, and only, because they are provisional. It is open debate among those with experience that is the ultimate value of the good society.
Science, then, can provide us with a set of values — not findings — for how to run our lives, and that includes our social and political lives. But it can do this only if we accept that assessing scientific findings is a far more difficult task than was once believed, and that those findings do not lead straight to political conclusions. Scientists can guide us only by admitting their weaknesses, and, concomitantly, when we outsiders judge scientists, we must do it not to the standard of truth, but to the much softer standard of expertise.
What do you think about whether, and how, social scientists and others should interpret the “values” of scientific research and “truth” to society at large?
Updated 04 March 2009 18:22 UTC
-
Replies
Jump to resultsResults
-
Harry Collins gave a great talk on related stuff at Science21 in Waterloo last year. Video of the talk and slides are available here
-
I have been familiar with Harry Collins’ work for a long time. Let me only say this. I would never leave important social and personal issues to experts and their expertise – being unaware of their own limitations may be the least of the problems they bring to a situation.
One example. Mervyn King, in a recent discussion of assessment of his new financial proposal for ‘quantitative easing’, committed the elementary logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. It is easily done. But this issue had doubtlessly been discussed in committee, so one can justifiably assume that, on this BoE committee at least, none of the members were clear about how to properly test an important piece of public policy or how to interpret such a test. When they later come out with an assessment of the policy, as they will, we will not be able to take this assessment at face value.
Assessing scientific findings is a complex enterprise and discovering the truth of something sometimes even more problematic. Anyone who thinks that sacrificing truth to expertise is a good idea is at the very least under the spell of an inadequate theory of truth.
-
Thanks for the useful link, Cameron.
I understand your point of view, Larry – but what if nonspecialist “interpreters” do not understand the research being reported? There are plenty of examples of massive misconceptions via “interpreters” – autism/vaccines being one obvious one in which one reads confident, persuasive articles written by Joseph Kennedy and others. Climate research provides many similar examples. -
Maxine, what you say happens all the time. I do not see how we can avoid such situations. Hence, I think we are always caught between the Scylla of superficiality or lack of understanding and the Charybdis of knowledgeable vested interest. I don’t know of an achievable equilibrium for this dilemma. Personally, I would err on the side of superficiality where it might hopefully by more obvious that one may be inadvertently engulfed by a swamp were I forced to choose. There is no way I would accept Collins’ “solution”.
Let me beg your indulgence and add another dimension to your scenario. What of those who understand a field perfectly well but for personal, ideological reasons choose to distort certain of its theories and data? Two economists who did this for a number of years were George Stigler and Milton Friedman. This has occurred in physics as well, for example, in the area of physical constants in the early 20th century. In neither case was appeal to expertise a solution, as the other experts were also been taken in, at least a little bit for a while.
Perhaps a modified Feyerabendian solution is the best we can hope for, where public debate yields the best solution in a given time frame.
-
I m not sure I m following this thread. I thought that the idea was to bring the principle of science into society, to show its good sides over the bad sides. Some of the bad rep of science is due to the fact that scientific news is often being reported to the media by non-scientist. As a result, contracdictory results are often advertised, and as a result, science is seen as unreliable. However, I think that the scientific community is starting to react to it. Isn’t that why there is a Science Media Centre in the UK ( and canada is trying to get one started.)
On the good sides of science, a very good article in the NYtimes about the goodness of science can be found here. An extract:
“Arguably science is the most successful human activity of all time. Which is not to say that life within it is always utopian, as several of my colleagues have pointed out in articles about pharmaceutical industry payments to medical researchers.
But nobody was ever sent to prison for espousing the wrong value for the Hubble constant. There is always room for more data to argue over.
So if you’re going to get gooey about something, that’s not so bad.
It is no coincidence that these are the same qualities that make for democracy and that they arose as a collective behavior about the same time that parliamentary democracies were appearing. If there is anything democracy requires and thrives on, it is the willingness to embrace debate and respect one another and the freedom to shun received wisdom. Science and democracy have always been twins."
This essay was written after Obama’s inauguration speech, in which he mentioned that he wanted to bring Science back into society. I found it very well written -
I have a problem with science studies and I don’t believe we need a third wave of science studies. If science is to be put at the core of society then real science and its practitioners need to be speaking about the science they practically engage with everyday. We need to take people away from pseudo-science and intellectualism, indeed we need a radical overhaul of education.
-
Prompted in another discussion, I will repeat my comment:
I read Collins’s article and didn’t find much in it apart from a couple of straw men that he easily knocked down (OK, Dawkins and Hawking have made some silly pronouncements but they’re hardly representative), an incomplete exposition of the well-known phenomenon that scientific results have error bars and a rather pathetic plea that social scientists didn’t really mean to say that science was a ‘just a form of faith or politics.’
Am I being too harsh? I think scientists have a much better understanding of their discipline that social scientists seem to give them credit for. Can anyone direct me to articles by social scientists that have anything interesting or insightful to say about science.
I thought Alom Shaha’s exploration of the topic much more interesting and rewarding!
-
One of several problems I find with Collins’ “new wave”, is the fact that he is deriving so much personal satisfaction with his discovery. Now, as I said in my post I am in support of some degree of acknowledging that there are experts and they likely should be involved with the discussion of important decisions – however, this does not mean that their word is law.
-
Ehsan Masood, currently Chief Commissioning Editor at Nature, has nobly risen to Stephen’s challenge, and has kindly given me permission to reproduce his thoughts here. He writes:
There are at least four ways in which social scientists are involved in the harder sciences and vice versa, and why this is important:
- One category is those like Harry Collins whom one could say are anthropologists and study and then publicize the workings of science. This might seem at an abstract level, but it does have implications for example in how the public regards science. In the UK, for example, ‘science studies’ is now formally offered to post-16 students in secondary schools and is designed to help stem the decline in young people taking chemistry and physics post 16. There is growing evidence that offering year-long course in science studies is a powerful way of getting more young people to considering taking science at A/S and A level.
- Another category is this week’s Nature Commentary (458, 148; 2009) by Pedro Sanchez on alternatives to food aid. This is an example of a social scientist (an agronomist in this case) who is using the scientific method (proof of principle) to demonstrate that the international community can find cheaper and more effective ways of helping farmers in Africa. Comments welcome at this Nature Network forum
- A third, and considerable, category is those social scientists who work alongside natural scientists in the many large global research assessments such as IPCC: people like Nicholas Stern, for example. The IPCC is divided into three working groups. Working group 3 comprises economists like Stern who look at the economic and social impacts of climate change.
- A fourth category can be found in the work of researchers such as LSE sociologists Nik Rose and Ilina Singh, who collaborate with Richard Kitney and colleagues at the new synthetic biology centre at Imperial College London. Together they will be looking into topics such as ethics, safety and commercialization.
Thanks, Ehsan!
-
There is a stray full stop in that link to the “food aid for Africa” forum discussion. Here is the correct link
Apologies.
Results
-
