Tuesday, January 14, 2014

On The Objectivity Of Science

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?




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