[Scientists] are often portrayed as objective experts, purveyors of speacialized information that they can use to make sophisticated technical judgements that we cannot or need not understand... The trouble with delegating this special authority to scientists is that, however convenient the image, they are not human encyclopaedias or data processors who need only find the right file to come up with the single true answer to our question. Like traditional priests, they are individuals with personal histories, childhood experiences, phobias, religious and political convictions, hopes, goals, desires, and ambitions. They are, like all of us, emotional beings, pursuing, usually with a passion and even obsession, work to which they are intensely dedicated. Inevitably these human qualities colour a scientist's work and influence the field, line of research, methods, and ultimately the conclusions of his or her investigations.

Scientific investigation is not a straightforward act of observation and recording, but rather a complex series of personal choices and subjective interpretations. It is striking how divergent results can emerge when separate teams of scientists ask the same question, using different approaches. Depending on the assumptions and techniques employed to investigate the problem, they can produce dramatically different sets of experimental data. At other times, the meaning of universally accepted data may be a matter of dispute. In this situation, alternate methods of analysis and interpretation can draw investigators to contrary conclusions.

The choice of methods, assumptions, and interpretations is often not an idle academic matter, but one fraught with passionate controversy. In most fields, the academic, political and philosophical inclinations of the scientist will strongly influence these choices. Together with the practical constraints on the investigation, such as the need for equipment and staff to carry it out, matters such as the allegiance of the investigators to the academic or political status quo will make a big difference to how they carry out their work. Do they hope to extend an accepted theory or to challenge it? Are they comforted or disturbed by the way their discipline is applied to current social controversies?

In the field of radiation health, for example, predictions of the risk posed by low-level radiation are based on extrapolations from much higher levels of exposure. Should scientists assume that radiation is proportionately as harmful at low doses as at high does, so that a half-dose will give half the risk of cancer? Or should they assume that because cells may be able to repair radiation damage when it is slight enough, that lower doses are proportionately less risk than high ones? The information available on this matter is far from conclusive, so the way the data are interpreted, or the assumptions made about the behaviour of irradiated cells, becomes very important. In effect, such choices determine the conclusions drawn about the risks of exposure to the low levels of radiation released during nuclear-power production. More importantly, these assumptions and interpretations are vehicles for the scientist's own beliefs and values—for example, convictions about the need for electric power, for a high technological standard of living and about the society and way of life that go along with it.

...back to top

Beth Savan, Science Under Siege: The Myth of Objectivity in Scientific Research, CBC Enterprises, Motreal, 1988, chapter 1.