Science and Society: how societal beliefs and values can inform good science

1. Science and Society: how societal beliefs and values can inform good science • Ape Genius: how views of non-human animals, including other primates, shaped what was observed for centuries and how this is changing. • Gould on 19th century anthropology, psychology, biology: how social views about innate differences between alleged “biological groups” shaped scientific hypotheses, auxiliary assumptions, and observations • Science and Society: Are there (should there be) ethical constraints on scientific research? • Secrets of the Wild Child: The Case of Genie

2. Science and its social context: How society can affect science How social context can inform (good) science • Gould on 19th century craniometry and anthropology: class and race differences. • Gould on 19th century craniometry and psychology: gender/sex differences.

3. How society can affect science How social context can inform (good) science Things we have studied to consider: • The presence and role of auxiliary assumptions • The role of systems or bodies of theories or hypotheses in generating “If H, then I” • The role of paradigms in setting up a puzzle-solving tradition • The theory-ladenness of observation

4. How society can affect science • Are the only relevant auxiliary assumptions, bodies of theories, paradigms, etc. internal to science – or can they include social beliefs? • When are Broca and colleagues studying a biological basis for (allegedly) innate differences between races, classes, and sexes? What is the specific historical and cultural context?

5. How social context can inform (good?) science S.J. Gould, “Wide Hats and Narrow Minds” • The hypothesis: intelligence is caused by brain size (larger is better!) • The players: Paul Broca • Founder of The Anthropological Society and Renowned Craniologist • Players continued: Louis Gratiolet • Comparative anatomist

6. How social context can inform (good?) science Broca:“Among the questions heretofore discussed within the Anthropological Society, none is equal in interest and importance to the question before us now. . . . “The great importance of craniology has struck anthropologists with such force that many among us have neglected the other parts of our science in order to devote ourselves almost exclusively to the study of skulls. ... “In such data, we hope to find some information relevant to the intellectual value of the various human races.”

7. How social context can inform (good?) science S.J. Gould, “Wide Hats and Narrow Minds” • The players cont’d: (the late!) Cuvier • The “crucial test”: • The size of his hat…

8. How social context can inform (good?) science Gould’s bottom line: “On the surface, this tale seems ludicrous. The thought of France's finest anthropologists arguing passionately about the meaning of a dead colleague's hat could easily provoke the most misleading and dangerous inference of all about history—a view of the past as a domain of naive half-wits, the path of history as a tale of progress, and the present as sophisticated and enlightened.

9. How social context can inform (good?) science Gould’s bottom line: “But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. ..

10. How social context can inform (good?) science What do we “fail to understand” about their world if we laugh at this example? • Long standing beliefs (beginning with the Ancient Greeks!) about the inferiority of women, slaves, servants… • Given a relatively “monolithic” science community in terms of gender, ethnicity, social class… it was easy to take such differences as a starting point, rather than something to be established… • Given restrictions on education opportunities for members of groups regarded as inferior, it was hard to establish one’s intellectual equality…

11. How social context can inform (good?) science A then current paradigm, or current auxiliary assumptions, or current system of theory as background and as shaping observations: “Among the questions heretofore discussed within the Anthropological Society, none is equal in interest and importance to the question before us now. . . . “[Discovering] the intellectual worth of the various human races.”

12. How social context can inform (good?) science • S.J. Gould, “Women’s Brains” • The hypothesis: Women had smaller brains than men and, like it or not, could not equal men in intelligence. • Players: Broca, Le Bon, and others. • The tests: head/skull measuring of contemporary women in autopsies, and skull measuring of fossil remains.

13. How social context can inform (good?) science Sex differences Broca: Anthropometrists [studiers of human body size] are working very hard “to measure with scientific certitude the inferiority of women” Broca: “There is no faith, however respectable, no interest, however legitimate, which must not accommodate itself to the progress of human knowledge and bend before truth”. Broca (et al): Sad to say, but we must, that women’s smaller brain size renders them inferior to men.

14. How social context can inform (good?) science Gould’s argument: some of Broca’s numbers are impeccable … “I have the greatest respect for Broca’s meticulous procedure [in the measurement of autopsied brains]. His numbers are sound. But “Numbers by themselves do nothing. All depends on what you do with them.”

15. How social context can inform (good?) science Gould’s conclusions: some of Broca’s numbers are impeccable but… He did not take into account the age of the women whose brain he autopsied… The number of ancient skulls on which he based his argument that men’s brains are now bigger than women’s because of their need for intelligence to survive and provide, was way too small. And what if women’s brains are smaller on average simply because their bodies are smaller…? And thus have the same ratio of body size/brain size as men?

16. How social context can inform (good?) science Broca’s response to such queries: We might ask if the small size of the female’s brain depends exclusively upon the small size of her body [as some colleagues ask]. But we must not forget than women are, on the average, a little less intelligent than men, a difference which we should not exaggerate but which is, nonetheless, real. That they are less intelligent was supposed to be what he was establishing – not assuming!

17. How social context can inform (good?) science Gould, again, trying to understand “their” world, and his “bottom line” in the essay: “To appreciate the social role of Broca and his school, we must recognize that his statements about the brains of women do not reflect an isolated prejudice toward a singular disadvantaged group. “They must be weighed in the context of a general theory that supported contemporary social distinctions as biologically ordained.”

18. How social context can inform (good?) science Contemporary lessons? If we don’t take past scientists to be dimwits, and we recognize that the human brain hasn’t changed, then we need to consider how if at all, in our own time and “world,” social beliefs and context can impact (good) science. Exhibit A: The Bell Curve Exhibit B: Larry Summers when president of Harvard!

19. What ethical responsibilities (if any) are attendant to the practice of science? Recall the norms: The autonomy of science Knowledge is a good for its own sake The case: the discovery of a so-called feral child in California The scientific question: Were Chomsky and other linguists correct that there is “a critical window” for language acquisition, beyond which language can’t be learned.

20. What ethical responsibilities (if any) are attendant to the practice of science? Genie as a “natural experiment” to study the question of whether there is “a critical window” for a child’s acquisition of language… after which, it is too late to learn a language. The players: linguists, psychologists, social workers, social agencies, Genie (!) and her mother… Did those studying Genie protect her well being? Suffer from “rescue fantasies” that motivated too much attention to teaching her language and too little to the other needs she had…? In this case, was/is the knowledge to be gained “a good in itself” that trumped ethical questions?