On the bias of science: Part One

It seems that many people have some fundamental misconceptions about the nature of the scientific enterprise. It is obviously an institution with some flaws -- it ' s a human endeavor and humans are flawed. One of its strengths however, is a proclivity for self-examination. Most errors get corrected reasonably soon, and the culture, norms and policies of scientific institutions have tended to change for the better over time. (Past results are no guarantee of future performance.)Here are some facts that I know because I am inside it. I am on the faculty of a school of public health, which is associated with a medical school; our university also has a biology department and various specialty institutes in biology and medicine. We also have physics, chemistry and mathematics departments, psychology, computer science, you name it -- it ' s a big, old, university. I can assure you, 100%, that neither our university, nor universities as a class, have any " agenda " for what the outcome of scientific investigation is supposed to be in any of these fields. The investigators are all independent, they obtain research grants through the university in their own names and they develop and carry out their own programs of research. Nobody, from the president to the provost to the dean to the department chair, tries to tell them what to study or what conclusions to reach. And why would they? These disciplines don ' t work that way. You carry out the study and the data speaks for itself....
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs