A handsome man, seemingly a man of science wearing a white coat appears on
the Television screen and tells us how the health drink Horlicks has been found to be immensely beneficial in improving
both the health and mind among young children. The visual, in order to back up
the claim flashes young, healthy and noisy
children bustling with all the trappings of good health and mind. We the lay
people lap up literally what the handsome man in the advertisement announces because it
is deeply ingrained in us that science is always non-partisan. Although it is
questionable if the claim can stand to scientific test.
The commercial exploitation of science for its perceived
strength of unbiased role(in knowledge production)) can be traced back to 1941 in the Chesterfield cigarette advertisement
that depicted researchers measuring
nicotine and thereby promoting the brand
for its relatively low nicotine level.
Naturally questions will arise how science as an academic
pursuit can be faulted on this count. It is the practitioners of science who
are to be blamed. That is the crux of the matter that I wish to highlight.
Those who may view science as a disembodied entity might hold a different
viewpoint.
How ideology can privilege one set of scientific hypothesis
over another can be found in the claims of Trofin Lysenko(1898—1976)an agronomist
from former Soviet Union who argued in favour
of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In other words according to
Lysenko mangoes can be grown in coconut trees. His method of mutating crops by ‘vernalization’
was tested in many countries and found to be false.
Interestingly it reminds me Bulgakov’s novel The Heart of a Dog in which a doctor
implants a human heart( other organs too
including testicles) into a street dog assuming in the manner of Lysenko that
the dog will exhibit behaviour that are human. Unfortunately the experiment goes
awry and the dog becomes an intractable menace. I often think that the novel is nothing but a
lampooning of Lysenko’s outlandish idea.
Yet the Lysenko hypothesis found favour with the Soviet
regime because it is in line with the party’s ideology. In recent times the Steady state Theory that postulates that
the universe has no beginning and no ending and it just is , finds support
among the Marxist disciples simply for the reason that it precludes the need
for a creator. In both the case I feel the scientific claim here is
ideologically deterministic.
‘Forman Thesis’ named after the American science historian
argues that the content of early Quantum Mechanics was shaped by the culture in
which it was produced. It was the unexpected defeat of Germany in the first world war that
prompted the scientists to accept the uncertainty principle put forward by
Werner Heisenberg rather than alternate interpretations of Quantum Mechanics.
The title of Bruno Latur’s book’ Laboratory Life:The Social Construction Of Scientific facts(co written
with Stephan Woolgar) is a pointer to the fact that even scientific facts
can also be socially constructed.
A scientist is not a disembodied entity that toils day in
and day out inside a laboratory. He or She is also a human being like you and
me and is influenced by what goes around him or her.
In recent times our state has witnessed a massive uprising
in the form of public protest against the construction of big dams. Reams of
paper have been used in writing in favour of or against the construction of big
dams. The whole issue has become hazy for lay people as the discourse has
failed to bring about a reconciliation of the opposites.
Expert committees have been constituted that voice
both for and against the issue. It will be interesting to see how the uprising
is going to influence the scientific truths involved in the issue. Or will science really remain unbiased?