The Academic Pursuit of Knowledge, Objectivity and Ethics

[dragon wench]

I suppose this topic has multiple parts to it, and is perhaps two threads in one, but the questions are related so I decided to place them in the same post. For a number of years, especially since becoming engaged with post-graduate research in History, a number of different questions have come to occupy me somewhat. All of these question have been asked before, so I'm not coming out with anything especially original , I just thought it might be interesting to see how people here view some of these issues.

1) Is it right to continue with a particular area of research in the knowledge that it could engender considerable harm ? A dramatic example of this is the development of the A-bomb... A current example would be that of cloning. The social sciences and arts can also have a significant impact on individuals and society generally. One such area is that of oral history. In this case the historian, asks individuals, often the elderly, about events in their past so as to acquire deeper understanding of a particular era. This can be fraught with peril.... for sometimes remembering can be extremely traumatic... and ethical issues abound..
In many cases, however, the researcher, returns to his or her community and is lauded by peers... celebrated for the discovery of seminal material. All too often, those individuals who gave their time.. their experiences... are forgotten...

2) Another question I have often pondered is that of academic 'objectivity'.
I am not denigrating the wealth of research that has contributed to our understanding of the world about us. But, I do question the perception that such investigation is entirely "objective." Everybody, is influenced, to some degree, by their cultural beliefs. And often, academic and intellectual thought directly mirrors the prevailing currents of a certain era... Or much worse.. sometimes heinous ideologies are justified beneath the guise of academic respectability....

Case in point: In 1839, against a backdrop of debate concerning slavery and racial superiority Samual George Morton's work on skull size was published in Crania Americana.
The following is an except from Race and Manifest Destiny, The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism, Reginald Horseman.
"Morton was no Southerner defending slavery, but a Philadelphia physician engaged in basic research. He established in Philadelphia the world's largest collection of human skulls. <snip> Although Morton based his conclusions on physical comparisons, he was also deeply impressed by historic Caucasian achievements and by the evidence of separate human races three thousand years before in Egypt. Morton pointed out that the Caucasian and the Negro were as distinct in ancient Egypt as they were in the nineteenth century. <snip> He characterized the Caucasian race as "distinguished for the facility with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments." <snip> The American Indians were the main subject of Morton's work, and his conclusion was that "the intellectual faculties of this great family appear to be of a decidely inferior cast when compared with those of Caucasion or Mongolian races."

And sadly... such notions still exist.. and equally sadly they still appear in academic communities...
Enter Dr. Phillip Rushton. Currently a professor in psychology in the University of Western Ontario, Rushton's controversial history began when he presented a paper at the Symposium on Evolutionary Theory, Economics, and Political Science in 1989. He classified all human beings somewhere among the three major racial groups: Black (Negroid), White (Caucasoid), Asian (Mongoloid). He claimed to have scientific evidence of an inherited link between brain size, intelligence and race, where Blacks and Asians are on opposite ends and Whites are in between.


Thoughts?

[fable]

And sadly... such notions still exist.. and equally sadly they still appear in academic communities...
Enter Dr. Phillip Rushton. Currently a professor in psychology in the University of Western Ontario, Rushton's controversial history began when he presented a paper at the Symposium on Evolutionary Theory, Economics, and Political Science in 1989. He classified all human beings somewhere among the three major racial groups: Black (Negroid), White (Caucasoid), Asian (Mongoloid). He claimed to have scientific evidence of an inherited link between brain size, intelligence and race, where Blacks and Asians are on opposite ends and Whites are in between.

Thoughts?

Sleazy pop culture, and a man trying to take advantage of it to make a few bucks. Skull size doesn't mean anything. (Neanderthals had a larger skull size than we Cro Magnons.) Intelligence can't be measured as such; only achievements can, and they are dramatically affected by a range of cultural and social interactions. A sliding scale to measure brightness according to race...? Does this mean that someone who's 1/8th black and 7/8ths white--an Octaroon, to use the once dominant language of New Orleans-- is 1/8th brighter than someone who is completely black, while someone who is half-Oriental and half-Black is equivalent to a Causasian? It is to laugh.

Or to spit in anger, frankly. And you know some people are going to use such self-aggrandizing garbage as a means to further their own hateful ends.

[Fezek]

I'm sure anyone can claim to have scientific evidence of some kind or other; it is whether or not such evidence can stand up to rigorous testing or not.
I could say I have scientific evidence that I am a frog but I doubt that my evidence would stand up to any fairly reasonable biologists' testing of my evidence.
I remember reading an article (on this forum??) about a man who claimed to have discovered evidence of a new sub species of human he found in his garden. After sending his evidence off to nearby university , the university staff refuted his evidence and suggested he had found " a barbie doll that had been chewed up by a dog".
Forgive me , maybe I am just rambling. It's 3:45 am here in Japan.

[dragon wench]

A note about Rushton...
This man is not some backyard bumpkin attempting to popularise his homespun notions...
He is a professor teaching in one of Canada's most prestigious and respected universities..
Despite massive protests from students, human rights organisations and even the premier of the province at that time.. the man was not removed from his position.

[edlington_j]

The pursuit for knowledge is going to happen for ever. It's not in our nature to sit on our back sides and do nothing (unless the Olympics starts showing much more beach volleyball).

What you choose to try and learn is up to you. You answer only to yourself and there certainly are some arse holes around.

[Morril]

[QUOTE=dragon wench]
1) Is it right to continue with a particular area of research in the knowledge that it could engender considerable harm ? A dramatic example of this is the development of the A-bomb... A current example would be that of cloning. The social sciences and arts can also have a significant impact on individuals and society generally. One such area is that of oral history. In this case the historian, asks individuals, often the elderly, about events in their past so as to acquire deeper understanding of a particular era. This can be fraught with peril.... for sometimes remembering can be extremely traumatic... and ethical issues abound.. [/QUOTE]
Good question. One problem is, however, that it is often difficult (or impossible) to decide if something later can be used to cause harm. And almost everything can in on way or another be used harmfully, even if it is not its "normal" function.Take a knife: can be useful but also can be used to kill people (I know it’s a banal exempel). Cloning is a very good example: on one hand it can be used to produce medicine or even organ for transplantation, but in the other hand it can (theoretical) also be used to produce a lot of “perfect soldiers”. Personal I think we must research in almost everything possible – although it can be potential dangerous it is also the only way we can hope to find cure for cancer, find better way to produce energy, solve enviromental problems and so on. Then we must be intelligent enough to handle the etical problems that always follows.

[QUOTE=dragon wench]
2)
And sadly... such notions still exist.. and equally sadly they still appear in academic communities...
Enter Dr. Phillip Rushton. Currently a professor in psychology in the University of Western Ontario, Rushton's controversial history began when he presented a paper at the Symposium on Evolutionary Theory, Economics, and Political Science in 1989. He classified all human beings somewhere among the three major racial groups: Black (Negroid), White (Caucasoid), Asian (Mongoloid). He claimed to have scientific evidence of an inherited link between brain size, intelligence and race, where Blacks and Asians are on opposite ends and Whites are in between.
[/QUOTE]
Of course you can only smile at such statements and "theories". No normal people today can believe that the size of the skull or the color of the skin have any relation to the intelligence. But the problem is that such theories sometimes easily can be "pressed down" at people so they finally believe it (this "theories" was highly believed by some nazi doctors in 2.WW). So we can laugh at such theories, but I see them also potential dangerous.

[Weasel]

My take on number two, (number one to me comes down to morals)


The thought that comes to my mind, why did he decide to research this subject. From my (somewhat limited view) any research is started to reach a answer. Ask the reason why he was looking for an answer and then judge the reasoning behind his claim.

[Opalescence]

Oh God, please do NOT bring these subjects up in my presence. As everyone knows I consider myself a scientific thinker, and I feel obligated to answer these sorts of questions!

1. Being a Computer Science/Applied Math major I can't really say since I'm not in a field that usually deals with such things. Still, using what logical thinking I've garnered over my University years, combined with what I have learned about the human race in general, I must sadly say that we should most definately NOT toy with forces that can be dangerous (no playing with fire). The human race is, by nature, exploitative. Nobel created TNT to blast tunnels through mountains so trains can go through instead of around; humans instead used it to blast people. Atomic power COULD have been used merely to power buildings, instead its first use was to utterly decimate two cities. Given humanity's track record I'm extremely reluctant to trust it with any dangerous science.

2. Friend, theoretically we in the scientific community abhor any influence upon our judgements. Most scientific journals can openly reject any papers it deems of "unscientific basis", which is a polite term for academic subjectivity. We try our best to keep our nose to the facts, only the facts, and nothing but the facts, but occassionally things slip past us. Now Morton I cannot speak for, but Rushton's paper is presented in a fairly respectable setting, and I would be loathe to think he did not do his research; that he would dare to place his name upon any paper he did not put every effort into ensuring it was of the best scientific quality that he could possibly make it. Truth is often stranger than fiction; he may possibly be correct. Then again, the only law that is constant is science is that no law is a constant; it is also just as possible he's wrong.


In the realm of science, this is what happens, day after day: rules are made, laws are created, boundaries are formed.
And the next day, those rules are broken, those laws discarded, and those boundaries crossed. That, my friends, is science.

[C Elegans]

Hehe, this is the kind of question I ponder and discuss with colleagues every week...there are no easy answers

1) Is it right to continue with a particular area of research in the knowledge that it could engender considerable harm?

Here I agree with Morril: The major problem is that it's most often impossible to predict whether certain knowledge will have more benefits than dangers, and many of the major discoveries in science are made serendipitiously, ie they were not predicted and scientists did not intentionally look for that particular discovery.

Almost all knowledge can be used in a harmful way, as tools for destructive and immoral acts or as propaganda by inhumane ideologies. For instance, if we study Germany during the 1930's, we can learn both how to avoid and how to create a highly discriminative society. If we study genetic engineering, we can learn both how to cure some of mans most painful diseases, and how to create an elite society with people selected for certains traits.

2) Another question I have often pondered is that of academic 'objectivity'.
I am not denigrating the wealth of research that has contributed to our understanding of the world about us. But, I do question the perception that such investigation is entirely "objective." Everybody, is influenced, to some degree, by their cultural beliefs. And often, academic and intellectual thought directly mirrors the prevailing currents of a certain era... Or much worse.. sometimes heinous ideologies are justified beneath the guise of academic respectability....

The objectivity of science lies in the scientific method. What you can easily corrupt though, is the circumstances for science to exist in. Science do not exist in a vacuum but in a society, and although the scientific method is designed to exclude the scientist's own personal opinion, feelings or beliefs, it is not difficult to construct a social structure where science is impossible to conduct.

Here at SYM I have many times answered questions regarding whether a scientists is affected by personal belief and also answered various assumptions that science is a faith in the same manner as religion. Because of this I have previosly posted definitions of what science is, so forgive me for repeating myself, but here we go again:

Science is a strategy to gain knowledge and understanding about natural phenomena by systemised, repeated observations and experiments.

This website
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_l ... ndixE.html
has a good basic introduction to what science is:

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

This little online book also has a nice introduction to science on page 1-11, and if you follow the link you will see a chart-flow of how science is conducted.
http://books.nap.edu/books/030907309X/h ... ml#pagetop

So, the scientific method in itself really minimize the influence of the scientist - I can't change the outcome of my experiments with pure willpower. I would very much like to find a pharmacological compound that decrease the cognitive impairment I see in demented patients, but so far, this wish has neither made their test results better, nor made their brain cells grow in number. Also, when my Japanese, American, French or Canadian colleagues repeat the same experiments as we do, they don't find any improvement either. It doesn't matter what my hopes and wishes are, what my personal opinions are, what my hypothesis and my predictions are or what personal biases I might have: the measurement equipment I use will register the same values regardless of me. The only thing I can do is to introduce non-scientific events in the measurement process (ie I can manipulate the equipment) or falsify the data (ie I can ignore the values I get and instead put in figures I like better). But this is not science. This is not the scientific method. This is just me being a corrupt person.

So, let's presume I falsify my data or that I simply get measurements error due to faulty equipment. Still, that doesn't change what is going to happen when my colleagues all over world repeat my experiment during the same condition, and find totally different results. Replication, ie independent repeating of the experiment and getting the same results, is a fundamental part of science. My lab may have made a measurement error, but it's not so likely that 100 other labs will have the same error.

"Morton was no Southerner defending slavery, but a Philadelphia physician engaged in basic research. He established in Philadelphia the world's largest collection of human skulls. <snip> Although Morton based his conclusions on physical comparisons, he was also deeply impressed by historic Caucasian achievements and by the evidence of separate human races three thousand years before in Egypt.
<snip>
Enter Dr. Phillip Rushton. Currently a professor in psychology in the University of Western Ontario, Rushton's controversial history began when he presented a paper at the Symposium on Evolutionary Theory, Economics, and Political Science in 1989. He classified all human beings somewhere among the three major racial groups: Black (Negroid), White (Caucasoid), Asian (Mongoloid). He claimed to have scientific evidence of an inherited link between brain size, intelligence and race, where Blacks and Asians are on opposite ends and Whites are in between.

This is two examples of non science, or bad science. Being a professor in psychology doesn't mean your subjective personal opinions are any more scientifically valid than the man on the street's personal opinions.

Morton makes a taxonomy of racial groups based on skull morphology, then he attaches his subjective values to these groups. Ok, I can make a taxonomy of life forms based on colour, then I can attach my personal colour-taste to it. Red is my favorite colour, so corn snakes, robins and starfish are more worth and better life forms than vipers, humans or sharks. However, in order to make science out of this, I must first formulate a testable hypothesis and I need to make an operational definition of what constitutes a "better life form". In order to test for what is better or worse life form, I must construct measurement instruments, and those must be validated and tested for reliability. There you can already see how problematic it would be to make science out of this.

Rushton's paper on the other hand can be labeled as non-scientific or as bad science, depending on circumstances. (I made search, and found out that it was presented at the meeting you mentioned, but it has never been published in the peer-reviewed press. That alone is reason enough to be suspicious - not even the most established meetings scrutinize papers in the same manner as the peer-reviewed press does, and this is simply because symposia and congresses are aimed to be more open - places for testing of new ideas, discussions, brain storming etc.) Anyway, for many years, white Europeans and Americans had significantly higher IQ than black Americans. However, also few totally scientifically unedcuated people are so stupid so they don't realise there are other factors than intelligence, ie background factors and co-variating factors, that contribute to the data aquired. Already in the childhood of IQ-measurements, it was known that level of education played a role, although it was not known how large.

I am not familiar with Rushton's work, but it sounds similar to the infamous "Bell curve" and if it has similar flaws, ie failing to address such basic issues as correlations are not the same as casual explanation and use of only a few selected factors and ignoring other factors, then it is not even bad science, then it is just not science. Non science does not become science because the person performing it is a scientist. Einstein having dinner with Crick is not science because they both worked as professional scientists