Scientific Approach and Failure of Objectivity

Scientific Approach and Failure of Objectivity *Note: This article is from the book (Traitors of Truth: Cheating and Deception in the Halls of Science) for more please check out the book. The essence of the scientific approach is objectivity. It is assumed that the world evaluates facts and tests hypotheses against the strictness of its expectations and wishes regarding results, and in the view of most people that objectivity is the hallmark of the world, as it keeps his vision free from the distorted effects of beliefs, making him see the real world as it is. Objectivity does not get it easily, and researchers undergo long training to get it. For some scientists, however, objectivity is a shell, not an honest approach to the world. Under this shell, the world can plant its dogmatic beliefs about the world far easier than any explicit demagogue. Science is supposed to be a community of thinkers dedicated to a common goal. If a member of that community falls victim to their belief and tries to reinforce their rigid beliefs in the name of science; will their colleagues not immediately recognize this error and take action to correct it? The facts discussed in this chapter include cases of intentional forgery and self-deception, and as far as the scientific community is concerned, it is of course not the origin of the error, the danger of deletion exists. The facts relate to an idea that represents a difficult test of objectivity: how and to what extent genetics and the environment shape the characteristics of organisms, and of man in particular? Samuel G. Morton was a famous Philadelphia physician, a well-known scientist of his time, who in his lifetime (1830-1851) collected more than a thousand human skulls of people of different races, and believed that the size of the skull is a measure of intelligence. He has an order of genders by the size of the skull, in which, of course, whites are placed on his head, blacks are placed below him, and reds in his midst, and whites are found among Western European Jews. What is striking about Morton's case is how he completely allowed his pre-existing biases to permeate his scientific work. His doctrine shaped not only his theory, but the very data from which he supposedly derived his theory. He manipulated the numbers to get the results he wanted, and this manipulation took place publicly, before his scientific reports, so it is clear that he did so unconsciously (almost the same error finding in this extraordinary story was that none of the modern scientists had ever observed it). Morton was not a queer individual tweeting out of the squadron, but representing the elite of the American flag, "We should probably not have had a reputation among students around the world more than Dr. Morton," as his obituary in the New York Tribune noted. Morton was widely praised for his time, repeatedly replacing speculation with a set of objective facts, according to Gould; in the Negro's proper position as an inferior race." The way Morton fabricated his data then became childishly clear: basically, he would insert a sample of males with smaller skulls when he wanted to take down the average group and exclude them when he wanted to raise the average group, and then he would insert a large group of Incas (in smaller skulls in general) into the assessment of the Amerindians, but clearly show the Hindus with smaller heads so as not to drag the average Caucasians down, failing to notice that the men were larger. Computational respectively, all in favor of his prejudices about racial hierarchies. Size of internal skull according to perspiration in cubic inches Race. According to Morton, Gold Recalculated Caucasian (White) Mughal Malay American (Indians) Ethiopian (Black) 87 83 81 82 78 87 (talk) 84 (old) 87 85 86 83 Gould recalculated Morton's data (with the results shown in the following table), concluding that "a corrective to Morton's traditional ranking reveals that there are no statistically significant differences between races in relation to Morton's data". The manipulation of Morton's data was never discovered by any of the scientists who adopted his results, and his tables remained unchallenged in the scientific literature, and did not lose sight of the scene until the whole subject of racial order became infamous. But throughout the 19th century, the search for "scientific" standards for man continued, which would rank some societies hierarchically, and the researchers consistently declared the strict objectivity taken or the impossibility of bias in their results. Stephen Gould in his book The Mismeasure of Man chronicles the sad story of these belief practices in science,2 and the common denominator is the pre-bias in scientific dress. A scientist who believes in some of the social beliefs of his time will try to prove them "scientifically", in other words: based on the objective testing of the scientific method; but when looking at data, necessarily in the real world, he will unconsciously choose the data that supports his initial assumption, and then make the assumption. For example, Paul Broca, a prominent French anatomist who named the speech region of the brain after him, was a major proponent of order by brain size, writing in 1861: "In general: the brain is larger in older adults, and larger in men than in older adults." Women, larger in great men of humble talent, larger in superior races than degenerate ones." When an equaliser noticed that Germans had larger brains than the French, though obviously less intelligent, Broca invoked factors such as body size that actually affected brain size, but only to correct that the German brains were smaller than the French. French brains. On another occasion the brains of five prominent professors at the University of Goettingen were weighed posthumously they had already agreed to this, and when it was embarrassingly found that the weights were close to average; Broca preferred to suggest that these professors were not too prominent to abandon his theory, and perhaps Broca should have listened to the facts if he had known that his brain would only weigh a few grams above average. Gould argues that theories "are based on numbers, and interpreters are often surrounded by their own stylized language, they believe in their own objectivity, and they fail to recognize the prejudice that leads them to a certain interpretation among many compatible explanations of numbers. Paul Broca is now far behind us, and we can refer to him to see that he used numbers not to generate new theories, but to make preconceived conclusions... Broca was an idealist, one that no one can overrides in great interest and precise measurement, so much." It is easy to laugh at the strange and deceptive behavior of men like Morton and Broca, but it is wrong, they were not just useless gullible living in the nineteenth century, but Morton and Broca are one of the best scientists of their country, this round trip has been passed by many scientists after them, and the scientists of the twentieth century have always proved themselves qualified to fall into the same trap, only the manifestations of the trap differ. (1) Stephen J. Gould, "Morton's Ranking of Races by Cranial Capacity," Science, 200, 503-509, 1978. (2) Stephen J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (Norton, New York, 1981). William Broad - Neoclass Wade — Source: Brahin Center website - Published 2019-07-04 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/articles/science-scientism/النهج-العلمي-وفشل-الموضوعية