Micek's Tumblelog

theonlyplfrmat:

pianycist:

cognitivedissonance:

Science has committed many a sin.

A better list of “sins” would be

• Scientific racism
• Scientific sexism
• the prior pathologization of non-heterosexual people
• the pathologization of trans* people
• the pathologization of asexual people
• the nonconsentual genital surgery performed on intersex people
• the persistent myth that fat bodies cannot be healthy bodies

and probably many more that I can’t think of off the top of my head right now.

The history of science shows that the sciences are far from being without appeal to popular prejudices.

I’m confused by this post. I have a few quick objections.

1. Neither of the above two authors demonstrate knowledge of what ‘science’ actually means. I’ll give you all a quick refresher. Science, according to my dashboard dictionary, is

the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

In other words, science is a specific process by which we investigate the world. An activity. Not a thing or an entity. Science can’t “commit sins” any more than washing your car or baking a loaf of bread can commit sins. This isn’t just playing semantics; this feeds into the next point, which is that

2. ‘Science’ never committed any sins, people did. Human beings were racists, persecuted minorities, etc. So, maybe science influenced these human beings, but here, I think you’re wrong because

3. You put the cart before the horse. In your last sentence, you write that 

The history of science shows that the sciences are far from being without appeal to popular prejudices.

Is it the case that science produces a racist society, or does a racist society produce racist science? I think you’ll have a much more difficult time making the former case - trust me, I’ve read plenty of scientific literature. Properly done, it’s often boring as shit. Humans are always interpreting their experience to reinforce the things they believe, and scientists are no exception. I think this point is self-evident. To then claim that craniometry is ‘science’ (as opposed to junk science, pseudoscience, or just plain racist philosophy) ignores the fact that humans, and not some Objective Science Overlord, produce the science that the rest of us consume. Scientists are humans, and they bring with them all of the flaws, prejudices, and weaknesses of the rest of us. And besides, 

4. What’s the big point? ‘Science’ has been associated with bad things? (Observation - I’m amused that even the cartoon itself seems to suggest that the list of ‘sins’ is only considered to be pure evil by a fundie - but I digress) So what?  Just about anything you can think of has already been and will continue to be associated with something bad. I can’t think of one thing without some negative association. Yes, even rainbows.

5. In most of these cases you cite, scientists are among those on the forefront of correcting the wrongs being perpetrated. Who do you think debunked scientific racism? Hint - it probably wasn’t Otto von Bismarck. And, related to your last point, there are a bunch of scientists trying to prove that the findings of most medical literature are overblown.

6. Finally, you haven’t made the case that the people who commited these sins were scientists. Yes, some likely were. But, in the case of scientific racism, for example, the article you cited (did you read it?) makes clear that scientific racism was primarily used to justify European imperialism. Why the fuck would a scientist have anything to say about that? Maybe - and I’m just throwing this out there - maybe, people wanted to embellish their shitty ideas by dressing them up in the ethos of science. Here’s a quick hint - just because it has the word ‘science’ in the title Scientific Sexism, that doesn’t mean it’s actually science. To put it differently, “people of that color are inherently inferior” doesn’t sound like science in the same way that “here’s how to construct spircocyclic amines” sounds like science.

In conclusion, science says this post sucks.