Science vs Science

Science is without a doubt the greatest tool in explaining the forces behind natural phenomena. It provides us with a common toolset with which to share information, argue and explore the universe. Mathematical modeling, controlled experiments and rigorous peer review are how we have made the greatest advances in the history of humankind.

Our certainty in science is so total, so unwavering, that we often pit it against “lesser” forms of thinking. Fuzzy logic, ambiguity, mythos, religion — all are seen as weak human institutions in the face of the almost transcendental logic that science provides.

What if science had its human faults too? What if there was no escape from being a human animal trying to explain the world around it? Could mathematical truths be distorted through the lens of humanity?

Though the argument seems a typical post-modern questioning of age-old institutions, using scientific tests against scientific tests themselves yields some surprising and unsettling results. It turns out that because of unconscious bias, and because of our culture and peers, we are altering scientific results to better fit our worldview.

The natural place to start when discussing the problems about the scientific community is with the community itself. It turns out that being part of a community, no matter how devoted to free thinking and the pursuit of knowledge, influences our behavior and changes our views. A recent New York Times article, “Social Scientist Sees Bias Within,” describes Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist studying the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. In the article, Haidt explains what happened when he polled a room full of his peers at a conference.

Haidt wanted to know how many considered themselves to be politically liberal, and as the Times writes, “A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 per cent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom.” When he asked for the conservatives to identify themselves, “three people raised their hands.”

Haidt noted that it was “a statistically impossible lack of diversity” considering that, according to national polls, 40 per cent of Americans consider themselves to be conservative and only 20 per cent liberal. As it turns out, the conference was a public display of a strange social phenomenon. Haidt concluded that the psychologists, who as a group view themselves as “liberal,” more or less force conservatives to hide their views in order to be considered peers.

Haidt uses the term “tribal-moral community” to explain this phenomenon. It occurs whenever there is a need for humans to act as a distributed but cohesive group. Though usually applied to pre-industrial social organization, the establishment of these communities seems to be a universal social adaptation.

The herd mentality

In Samuel Bowl and Herbert Gintis’s 1998 article “The Moral Economy of Communities: Structured Populations and the Evolution of Pro-Social Norms,” the reasons behind this group mentality are explained. According to the mathematical models of social interactions presented in the paper, an actively interacting social group (or community) will be governed by four effects. The effects come as a result of group mentality, where belonging to a larger distributed social network alters the way in which we interact.

The effects are reputation, retaliation, segmentation and parochialism.

The reputation effect works when the group rewards those with a “reputation” for cooperative behavior. Logical, as one would be more willing to help someone who is known to help others.

The next effect, retaliation, states that any breach of trust or selfish, opportunistic behavior will be punished. The “punishment” is informal and consists of lowered group status. The group has fewer interactions with the perpetrator, thereby reducing his access to group resources. Would anyone want to review your paper if you’ve been known to plagiarize and fake results? Probably not.

The segmentation effect explains the reason why successful people tend to group together. It can help explain why certain laboratories and institutions produce almost consistently above average results and findings. Those “segments” that are most alike will coalesce. Smaller groups are formed within the larger. If you’ve had a brilliant finding, chances are someone else with an equally brilliant finding will want to talk to you. If you’ve been lying, cheating and plagiarizing, you’ll be stuck with people like yourself.

The final effect is simplest. Parochialism effect is another way of stating that members of one group are not likely to move to another. It applies equally well to tribal foraging societies as it does to academics. An English professor is probably not going to end up hanging out with the theoretical astrophysics staff.

So, with these four effects of group mentality, we can explain why there is such a liberal bias present in certain fields. If the group rewards or has rewarded those with a liberal views, chances are people wanting to gain favour with the group will exhibit those traits. Those at the “top” who helped establish the liberal culture will attract like-minded people, further cementing the core values. The parochialism effect ensures that the community remains more or less insular, preventing change to any canonical texts and ideas.

Retaliation effect is the most prominent, however. One would think that scientists would reward those who think freely and replace old theories with radical new ones. Ideally, yes, but new ideas challenge the integrity of the group. The group then reacts negatively, not out of spite, but for reasons more akin to evolutionary self-preservation.

In the Times article, Haidt spoke with some conservative psychologists and found that they behaved much like “closeted gay students in the 1980s.” They spoke about their views only with a select, trusted few and assumed a liberal identity when interacting with their peers.

The scientific world is full of examples of the retaliation effect, where ideas not in line with a current accepted theory are simply dismissed. The most famous example, as noted in the Times article, is that of Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1965, Moynihan used an unpopular “culture of poverty” theory to predict a breakdown of the nuclear family and subsequent poverty among urban African Americans.

He stated that the cumulative effects of slavery, poverty and repression will have a lasting impact on black communities that will not be simply undone with reintegration. Though ultimately proven correct, his theory was dismissed at the time because it did not sit well with the liberal views of other academics.
A much more recent example, but in the same vein, is that of UC Berkeley anthropology professor John Ogbu.

Ogbu, a black Nigerian American, was hired by an affluent suburb in the United States to study the poor academic performance of black youth. The black students, though equal in familial income, access to resources and geographic/cultural location, were significantly underperforming.

Group labels are facts and bias

Ogbu was called in when a school study was published that stated “black students earned a 1.9 GPA while their white counterparts held down an average of 3.45.” Parents wanted answers, educators were curious. Ogbu did typical anthropological research — he spent time living in the community, noted the culture, attitudes and opinions of the people and carefully formulated his answer.

He came to the conclusion that rebellious trends in black youth culture were the cause of the grade disparity. He explains, “The average black student in Shaker Heights put little effort into schoolwork and was part of a peer culture that looked down on academic success as “acting white.” That finding alone ruffled some feathers. When he went on to criticize the role of black parents, he caused full-blown outrage. Ogbu stated that: “The black parents feel it is their role to move to Shaker Heights, pay the higher taxes so their kids could graduate from Shaker, and that’s where their role stops. [ . . . ] That’s not how other ethnic groups think.”

When he published a book on his findings, not a single media outlet or academic group had a positive thing to say. Black academic groups shunned him for racism; liberal groups did not take to his interpretation of the results. There were no counter-studies or well-supported arguments, just a simple dismissal of an ethnographic study because it went against the grain of the incumbent culture.

Social groups, culture and day-to-day interaction are forces that we often take for granted. The idealism and purity of scientific inquiry is in itself dogmatic and community forming, making it impossible to escape bias. We’re inclined to agree with people who share our views, to create an “in” and an “out” group, to differentiate self from other. It’s a basic human survival tactic, and it’s helped us get where we are today. We have to remember that what was once beneficial can be harmful — from fat-storing gene sequences to subtle social rules, and if we are to advance human understanding, we need to understand and cope with our culture-forming tendencies.