NS
I am just using their posts about reality. I am uninterested in the problems of 'some theists'. Don't you think that the idea that science is objective as PD and jp seem to think is hugely problematic?
Yes, in the sense that the theoretical and the certainly actual are at odds. At an ontological level science gives us
a reality, but there’s no way to know whether that’s just what you get when science looks in the only places it’s capable of looking. At a practical level too science is done by subjective beings, and no matter how much it seeks to eliminate our biases there’s no way to know for sure that it actually does that – in other words it’s ideal in principle can be misapplied in practice.
PD
But that doesn't mean that science, in its theoretical state, isn't objective - merely that scientist are sometime not able to meet that goal.
I’m not so confident about that. Axiomatically science even in its theoretical state can only investigate that which its tools and methods are capable of investigating. How would we know definitively that there isn’t a reality that’s beyond the reach of science to investigate? The best we can say I think is something like, “science is a method that seeks to eliminate biases in its practice to provide understandings of reality that most align with the available evidence, validated by intersubjective experience”.
But the point about science and the scientific method is that it firstly recognises those issues and goes out of its way to mitigate against and eliminate any subjective interference in the objectivity of scientific data. So firstly, wherever possible the collection of data will be automated, removing human subjectivity.
Yes I know, but the key phrases there are “goes out of its way” and “wherever possible”. I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment, but “objective” then has to mean “subject to science’s ability to do these things” and not “absolute”.
Secondly reproducibility - the key element of scientific that data are only valid where they are reproducible in another setting and 'another scientists hand' - this is effectively about eliminating the individual subjectivity. If many scientists, working independently are able to reproduce the data then we move toward true objectivity.
Except all scientists are people, and people tend to have the same biases. This reminds me of a TV programme about Airbus when an employee proudly explained that the software for the fly-by-wire controls had two back ups, and that each version was written by a different team of programmers. That way, even if the first system failed either system two or even system three would kick in to save the day. They then cut to a software guru at MIT (I think) who said something like, “yes, but essentially all software degrees are the same and so programmers are basically trained in the same way. This means that, in the unlikely event that a deep fault lies in system one, chances are it’ll exist in the other systems too”. I agree that reproducibility goes a long way toward eliminating bias but that’s all it can do – go a long way toward it.
Thirdly, and linked to the second, an understanding of variability in data - and in the most appropriately designed studies, the ability to undercover the source of that variability, be it inherent in the data (and therefore objective) or an artefact of the experiment, whether due to human variability or inherent in the method.
And yet there are cases – admittedly rare, but cases nonetheless – in which wrong answers have been arrived at nonetheless. There’s a case for example in 1950s America where babies were found to have enlarged oesophagi so they zapped them with radiation to shrink them. Decades later thousands of the patients died needlessly of throat cancer – turns out the baby oesophagi weren’t enlarged at all. The data for the typical size went back to Victorian studies, when the bodies the anatomists used were regularly provided by grave robbers. Wealthy cemeteries were properly protected, but the poor were buried in mass graves that were easier to plunder. Poor people were often malnourished, one indicator of which is – an enlarged oesophagus! In short, the data the 1950s doctors relied on was corrupted, and led to a disastrous outcome despite following all the provisions you’ve set out, but necessarily
only to the best of their ability.
So although you may argue that the collection of scientific data is not truly objective in practice,…
Not quite – it may by chance be “truly" objective, but cannot
knowably be so.
… it is in theory and the method itself is designed to eliminate as much subjectivity as possible to drive it as near as possible to true objectivity. As such I think it is perfectly valid to describe science as objective. Not to do so simply lumps it with other approaches that never aim at objectivity nor classify subjectivity as a flaw.
I don’t think it does. “Objective” here implies an absolute but it’s more of a spectrum I think. I’m content to say that science produces results that are
more objective than, say, the claims of religion but we can’t know what’s further along the same axis.
NS
And you are quite simply wrong. As bhs has already pointed out we are by definition subjective beings, and what science does is use our ability to communicate to get an agreed intersubjective position. But since we can never be sure that any of our own experiences are real including that anyone else exists then all of those experiences are questionable.
Objectivity is an absolute. Given we are subjective, we cannot achieve it.
In day to day discussion, it doesn't really matter. In that sense it is rather like the free will discussion. We go about pur lives acting as if there is such a thing as free will but at base it makes no sense. So with science we go about it as if it can achieve objectivity, but given our restrictions that makes no sense either.
That doesn't devalue the importance and value of science from our quotidian experience.
Fully agree.
PD,
You are confusing bias with error.
For scientific objectivity the method needs to eliminate bias (which is a manifestation of subjectivity if that bias is human) - it does not, and ultimately cannot eliminate error. The method will need to minimise and understand error, but if there error remains, but no bias then the method and the data meet the standards of objectivity.
A well designed double blinded clinical trial will be free from bias - it can be riddled with error which would mean it would be poor science, but provided there is no bias it remains objective - rubbish, but objective none the less.
“A well designed double blinded clinical trial will be free from bias…” how so when, for example, the selection of the data to look at in the first place is done by subjective beings? Would the oesophagus case I mentioned above have passed a double blind clinical trial given that the basic data on which each trial would have relied was equally corrupted?
PD,
But that isn't a relevant concept with regard to science, where objectivity is about eliminating personal bias in the conducting of scientific studies that may ultimately bias the results of that study:
'Objectivity in science is an attempt to uncover truths about the natural world by eliminating personal biases, emotions, and false beliefs. It is often linked to observation as part of the scientific method. It is thus intimately related to the aim of testability and reproducibility.'
“Attempt”, yes – but that’s all it can be: an attempt. You cannot therefore say “will be free from bias” when what you actually mean is “will attempt to be free from bias”.
But in reality well constructed scientific studies meet the scientific objectivity test,…
Yes.
… but arguably also meet the philosophical definition…
How so?
- again I think you are confusing subjective bias (which emanates from 'perception, emotions, or imagination') and error, which is not purely restricted to human observers - there is error from automated systems just as much as human operators and observers. But error isn't subjectivity unless there is a bias rather than an error.
What if the “error” is for example in a diagnostic algorithm on which an automated system relies?
If I want to measure 100 microlitres of a reagent as part of a scientific experiment I will want to use accurate measuring equipment - that might be operated by a human or entirely automated. Both will have error associated with them, but it only impacts on subjectivity if the operator biases the measurement in a particular manner.
How do you now that one in a bajillion times the software running the measuring equipment won’t produce a rogue result?