The Scientific Attitude

by Lee McIntyre

  13. Think of medicine before Semmelweis: arguments about intuition with no data to check against are dangerous in scientific inquiry. We need to keep ourselves honest by looking for empirical evidence, wherever it is available.

  14. One long-standing study has offered a superior, cost-effective alternative to simultaneous lineups, but it has been roundly rejected out of hand by numerous law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. R. C. Lindsay and G. L. Wells, “Improving Eyewitness Identification from Lineups: Simultaneous versus Sequential Lineup Presentation,” Journal of Applied Psychology 70 (1985): 556–564.

  15. Susan Fiske and Cydney Dupree, “Gaining Trust as Well as Respect in Communicating to Motivated Audiences about Science Topics,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 111, suppl. 4 (Sept. 16, 2014): 13593–13597, http://www.pnas.org/content/111/Supplement_4/13593.full.

  16. Fiske and Dupree, “Gaining Trust.”

  17. M. Brewer and R. Brown, “Intergroup Relations,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, ed. D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, and G. Lindzey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 554–595.

  18. They do have an argument linking whether someone is “on my side” with whether they are judged to be “warm.” What they need, however, is some evidence that there is a two-way relationship between being warm and being trustworthy.

  19. Fiske and Dupree, “Gaining Trust.”

  20. This happens more often in social scientific research than one might think. Even the most beautifully set up experiment can fail if the wrong conclusion is drawn from the evidence. Many social scientific experiments show something, just perhaps not what their researchers claim.

  21. Fiske and Dupree, “Gaining Trust.”

  22. Fiske and Dupree, “Gaining Trust.”

  23. There are surely many more examples that could be cited here. But am I now myself subject to the criticism that I have just cherry picked a particularly egregious example? I don’t think so, for this study was conducted by researchers at an R1 research university (Princeton) and published in a prestigious journal. As for selection bias, I came across this study as I was looking for information about how scientists might become better communicators about issues such as climate change.

  24. For more on the classic assumptions that economists and others have made about human rationality, and how they break down in the face of experimental evidence, see Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

  25. One very early challenge to this, however, can be found in Herbert Simon’s work on bounded rationality and satisficing. See Herbert A. Simon, “Theories of Bounded Rationality,” in Decision and Organization, ed. C. B. McGuire and Roy Radner (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1972).

  26. Note that speculation is sometimes necessary even in the best-conducted scientific studies, but here it was centered around a tight research question, under controlled conditions, that enabled follow up in further scientific work.

  27. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, “Rethinking the Value of Choice: A Cultural Perspective on Intrinsic Motivation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76, no. 3 (1999): 349–366.

  28. McIntyre, Respecting Truth, 29–36.

  29. Fiske and Dupree, “Gaining Trust.”

  10    Valuing Science

  If the conception of science that I have outlined in this book is correct, we are now in a position to do three things: (1) understand and (2) defend the success of science where it has heretofore existed, and (3) grow it elsewhere. If fields like the social sciences wish to become more rigorous, they must follow the path traveled by others fields such as medicine: they must embrace the scientific attitude.

  The scientific attitude has helped us to realize that what is most special about science is not the alleged “scientific method” that it follows, but rather its respect for the power of empirical evidence to shape and change our theories, and reliance on the practices of critical scrutiny by our peers to catch our mistakes if we do not. Evidence matters in science, and recognition of this is the most important value that marks the difference between those who practice science and those who do not. Even if evidence cannot uniquely determine which theory is “true,” deference to empirical evidence is what gives science its special explanatory power. It keeps us on track even when our imperfect ideas and human weaknesses threaten to throw us off course.

  We also now understand why ideological theories like intelligent design and denialism about climate change should not be considered scientific, for they in some ways rely on the antithesis of the scientific attitude. They champion ideology over evidence. They have no humility over the fact that scientific investigation pushes us not toward certainty, but more likely toward abandoning some false idea that we desperately wanted to believe. There is more to scientific explanation than merely “getting it right” with technology or attempting to prove a theory.

  But scientific explanation is no less special if we finally accept it for what it is. We do not need to pretend that every scientific theory is in principle reducible to physics, or that the success of scientific theories means that they are more probably true. Science is a rational process by which we learn how to constantly reevaluate and discard our prejudices, wishes, and hunches about the world and replace them with conclusions that can be squared with the data of human experience. This is the root of scientific warrant. Despite the fact that science can never get us to “truth,” it is still a unique and remarkable way of knowing. Finally, to realize that science is about one’s attitude and not one’s method—about seeking justification rather than jumping to a conclusion about truth—is nonetheless to have a uniquely powerful tool in our explanatory arsenal. For all its limitations, I believe that science is the greatest invention the human mind has ever created for gathering empirical knowledge. As such, it is worth understanding, emulating, and defending.

  There remains, however, a pregnant question, for now that I have suggested such a robust defense of science, some may wonder whether I should take one more swing at developing the scientific attitude into a new criterion of demarcation. I trust that I have made clear in earlier chapters why I do not think that this is a wise (or necessary) move. Now that we are nearer the end, however, let me say a few more words about this. Throughout this book I have left the definition of the scientific attitude somewhat vague and refused to list too many criteria, because I think that science is ill-served by trying to specify too discretely what counts as science and what does not. The temptation here may be to try to reduce the scientific attitude to some sort of methodological formula, but my hope is that the scientific attitude will be used instead not to build a wall, but to light a path by showing what other disciplines must do if they wish to become more scientific.

  There is a difference between saying that the scientific attitude is a necessary condition and saying that it is a sufficient one.1 As stated earlier, to the extent that we are exploring and defending what is special about science, I believe that we should give up on the use of sufficient conditions. There are many ways for an investigation to fail to be science. This is why I have deliberately proposed the scientific attitude only as a necessary condition. But my hesitation in the face of playing the “if and only if” game, which earlier philosophers of science have said was required to demarcate science from nonscience, helps us to avoid a much worse pitfall—for if we pin our hopes on finding a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for science, the standards may be so high that we will never find a satisfactory answer to the question of what is distinctive about science, which leaves science undefended.2 Some will point out that I too have a flank open—that perhaps my account allows too much to count as science. If the scientific attitude is all that is necessary, why not count every instance in which someone uses the process of elimination or relies on observational evidence as science? Remember our earlier dust up over the question of whether the act of looking for one’s keys should count as science? Remember the farce of Bode�
��s law?

  Perhaps there is further work to be done to nail down any remaining necessary conditions for doing science. Having a full-blown theory may be one of them. If the scientific attitude requires that one must use evidence to test a theory, we had better be sure that we have a theory to test! As Bode’s law demonstrates, science is more than a series of lucky guesses. If our “theory” fits the evidence only by accident, this provides no warrant. Newtonian theory may get us to the Moon and back (even if it is wrong), while Bode’s law successfully predicted two new planets (even though it was based on no theory whatsoever), yet the first has warrant and the second does not. Why? Because instrumental success is not the sum total of what is distinctive about science. We are also concerned with justification. When we use the scientific attitude, we are testing a theory against the evidence. Though a theory may turn out to be wrong, this does not mean it is not scientific. Yet with Bode’s law there was no theory to test. The success of Bode’s law shows that even in empirical inquiry someone can get lucky.3 But this is not science. Success alone does not vindicate science. Just as the falsity of a theory does not make it unscientific, neither does mere fit with the evidence make a hypothesis scientific. There has to be a theory at stake. Which means that when we say that the scientific attitude requires us to care about evidence and use it to modify our theory, we had better take seriously the idea not just that science relies on evidence, but also that it requires a theory to be warranted on its basis. This is the backbone of scientific explanation.

  If scientific theories can never be proven true, we may never be certain how the world works. But this does not mean there is a better path. Even if the goal of science cannot be to get us to certainty (because this would outstrip even the greatest warrant we can infer from fit between a theory and empirical evidence) this is not a threat to the epistemological authority of science. Despite its limitations, science still provides a better way of knowing the empirical world than any of its competitors, because it is based on the founding assumption of science: that we come to know the world best through the evidence that it provides. We cannot rely on our intuition or our guesses. And we also cannot pretend that the empirical success of our theories lands us closer to truth. Yet there is simply no better way to understand the empirical world than to measure our hypotheses against the data of experience.

  For decades there has been a feud within the philosophy of science between those who think that science is special (and customarily try to situate that privilege within its allegedly unique methodology) and those who think that the process of scientific reasoning is no better or worse than any other human endeavor (owing to the social factors, attitudes, and interests that permeate all human conduct). What irony, therefore, if it turned out that what is most distinctive about science is the attitudes and values that scientists hold toward their inquiry!

  At bottom, what is special about science turns out not to be its method. In trying to explain science (and also what other fields should emulate if they wish to become more scientific), we must focus on scientific values. Previous accounts of science have spent a good deal of time arguing about methodology, both in trying to see whether we can demarcate science from nonscience, and in probing whether, if fields like the social sciences could just undergo methodological reform, they too could become more scientific. But this turns out to be the wrong focus.

  Throughout this book, I have argued that it is of limited value to spend most of our time in the philosophy of science studying the methods of those successful fields like astronomy and physics that have already become sciences. While there is a lot to learn from them, this will not get us to the deepest level of understanding what is distinctive about science. Instead, what I have done is look at those fields that are either failing to become sciences (because they are hopelessly ideological, have the wrong values, or are practiced by people who simply don’t care about formulating their beliefs based on evidence) or those that are still hoping to become scientific (like the social sciences) and are struggling to do better. An examination of what is missing in these fields reveals what is necessary for science.

  The scientific attitude is elusive, but it has been there the whole time. It was there in Bacon’s “virtues” and Popper’s account of falsification. It was there in Kuhn’s account of paradigm shifts. And it has been there even in the critics who have said that there is nothing special about the methodology of science. As it turns out, there may be no hard and fast criterion of demarcation between science and nonscience. Yet science is nonetheless real and distinctive, and we ought to pay proper respect to it as a privileged way of knowing. If we care about empirical evidence and use it to shape our theories, we are on the road to science. If not, we will remain mired in the ditch of ideology, superstition, and confusion.

  It is hard to hit a target one does not aim at. One of the most important things about science is that it aims at an understanding that, although it may not get us to truth, at least shapes the imaginative ideal of empirical inquiry as something that is noble and worth emulating. Science is one of the few activities where we catch humanity at its best; despite any selfish motives or petty agendas, we can cut through all this by caring about the right things, critiquing one another’s work, and never forgetting the common goal toward which we all aim: to know something from nature (or from human experience) that we did not know before.

  But just as science is real, the scientific attitude is real as well. Even if it is difficult to define and hard to measure, it makes up the core difference between what is science and what is not. To some this may seem surprising and hard to accept. It would be nice to have a “harder” criterion. Something logical perhaps; something we could use to cleave the world of inquiry neatly in two. This has long been the dream of the philosophy of science. But I do not think this dream can be fulfilled. This does not mean, however, that we cannot defend or emulate science, now that we are awake to its true nature. Science is still special, even if it is not quite what we thought it was.

  Notes

  1. And there is certainly a difference from saying that it is both necessary and sufficient. See chapter 4.

  2. Recall Laudan: philosophers largely abandoned this project for thirty years after his 1983 essay.

  3. And when they do, we must investigate further. Just imagine if the cold fusion theorists had had a little more success with their predictions.

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