Science Wars 15 Years Later

Statssekretær Kyrre Lekves innlegg under Vitenskapsårets konferanse Kan vi stole på Vitenskap 10. november? Holdt i gamle festsal, UiO.

Dear friends of science debates,

I’m happy to welcome you all to this second day of our conference, “Can we trust science?” As I’m sure the Norwegians among you are aware, this conference is a part of a series of public discussions that have been going on all around the country in our Year of Science, in Norwegian: Vitenskapsåret 2011.

Vitenskapsåret is the Government’s contribution to the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the University of Oslo, and the first step towards a new White Paper on research scheduled for spring 2013.

The “Science Wars” Issue of Social Text

I’ll begin today by explaining my title. The general expression “science wars” refers to a series of intellectual exchanges, between scientific realists and postmodernist critics, about the nature of scientific theory. Postmodernists – mainly from disciplines like comparative literature, feminist studies, media studies, and not least, science and technology studies – questioned scientific objectivity and set out to explore critically the nature of scientific knowledge and the processes through which it is established. Scientific realists countered that objective scientific knowledge is real, and accused postmodernist critics of having little understanding of the science they were criticising.

But today I use the term “science wars” in a more specific way. I use it to refer to the “science wars” issue of the journal Social Text from 1996 – that is, 15 years ago – in which New York University physics professor Alan Sokal published his infamous article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". I use it to remind us all of the so-called Sokal Hoax, the Sokal Affair.

In his article Sokal argued that quantum gravity is a linguistic and social construct and that quantum physics support postmodernist criticisms of scientific objectivity. A little later, in the journal Lingua Franca, he revealed that the article was just gibberish, and that he had submitted it to test whether the editors would, I quote, “publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.” Soon the matter was picked up by the media and the story moved rapidly around the world and became known as the Sokal Affair.

The Long and Winding Road

There are several reasons why I bring up this hoax today. 

First, the Sokal Affair thrust in-house academic discussions on scientific objectivity into the public eye – not unlike what Harald Eia’s programme Hjernevask, Brainwash, did here in Norway last year. And who isn’t likely to have a lot of questions after learning about the Sokal Affair – or after watching Hjernevask for that matter?

First of all, if we can’t trust the peer review system to prevent things like that, how can we trust peer review to ensure high quality in research at all? Isn’t the system set up just to stop the publishing of bad science? And second, mustn’t Sokal’s behaviour be considered a fraudulent betrayal of our trust? Don’t we have a tacit social contract with researchers saying that in return for our tax money they promise not to use their knowledge against us, or to mislead us, at least not deliberately?

Yes on all accounts – with the crucial exception that in the Sokal Affair, the peer review system was never actually put to the test – because in 1996, Social Text did not conduct peer review. Its editors believed that an editorial open policy would stimulate more original, less conventional research.

And even if this proved to be neither a recommendable nor a viable practice, we might still judge the editors’ intention and ambition both honest and honourable. We know from numerous studies that the conservative forces at work in evaluation panels are considerable. History has shown time and again that highly original, top quality research has often proved hard to recognize for the average referee. I look forward to learning more about issues like these in our session on consensus reports, peer review and status hierarchies before lunch today.

Perhaps some of you have read about this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry, Dan Shechtman. When he discovered the quasicrystals and tried to tell his colleagues about it, he was first given a beginner’s textbook in crystallography by the head of his laboratory with the suggestion he read it. Later he was asked by his boss to leave his research group..

Even if there are quite a few examples like Shechtman’s, this does not mean that behind every rejected application or article there resides an unrecognized genius. But it is no secret that the peer review process is an all together human enterprise, and as such constitutes an arena where all kinds of human propensities are displayed, also less fortunate ones, like lack of curiosity or openness, or unduly defensive demarcation etc.

Researchers know this. They experience the effects of it on a regular basis, and they talk about it a lot. And in order to endure the fact that grant getting or successful publishing has a ring of contingency to it, they often also make fun of it.                               

As a biologist and a former scientist myself, I appreciate this Sample Cover Letter for Journal Manuscript Resubmissions that I found on Dan Ariely’s  home page. I value especially the section on literature, I quote:

“One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions # 13-28 by Reviewer B. As you may recall [..], that reviewer listed 16 works that he/she felt we should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an essay on the Spanish-American War from a high school literary magazine. The only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone whom Reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited. To handle this, we have modified the Introduction and added, after the review of relevant literature, a subsection entitled "Review of Irrelevant Literature" that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine suggestions in the other reviews.”

The Theory-Ladeness of Observation?

Jokes aside: One of the issues that were highlighted by Sokal’s hoax was his ethically questionable breach of our trust as well as the disclosure of the editors’ inept acceptance of mumbo jumbo passed off as science. Another was the question about the role of ideology and values in science. Would the editors publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if it flattered their ideological preconceptions, Sokal asked.

Several Norwegian opinion makers have asked similar questions, and especially in the wake of Hjernevask. What role, if any, do values and ideology play in science? Are the researchers’ results affected, and if so, in what way? Several have questioned the findings of some of the researchers at the Centre for Gender Research and have found them excessively value laden. And not too long ago the leader of the Progress Party’s Youth, a law student, questioned what he perceives to be a strange lack of concern for the victims of crime among criminologists at the University of Oslo. In his opinion these researchers seem preoccupied with the welfare of the perpetrators only, and he wondered whether this is due to their ideological and political convictions.

Questions like these may affect negatively the public trust in science, and thus we don’t want to leave such issues to newspapers and Internet sites. The Government – and I – want to address them head-on ourselves, and I look forward to learning more about the role of values in science in our session after lunch today.

Vitenskapsåret

The peer review system – a pillar of science – is like democracy. It is not perfect, but it is the best we’ve got by far. And I am confident that by putting also the difficult aspects of it on the public agenda, and addressing them ourselves, we strengthen the public trust in science as well as the legitimacy of research and of researchers.

I look forward to hearing the prominent researchers gathered here today, and I am certain that we will all learn a lot.   

Thank you for your attention.