I believe that scientists should not be advocates based on
the nature of science and advocacy. First, the nature of science
is empirical and objective. Oxford dictionary defines it as “the intellectual
and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and
behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”
In stark contrast to the systematic study involved in science, advocacy may be
defined as “public support for or recommendation of a particular cause or
policy.”
My argument is that scientists may be advocates, but they cannot
be scientist and advocate at the same time. Take Climate Gate for example, a
situation in which hundreds of emails between top climate scientists were
hacked and spread throughout the internet (Revkin, 2009). While climate change is now a
widely accepted view, at the time it was still very controversial. The scientists that
believed in the concept of climate change integrity and empiricism were compromised
from the data breach and they came under serious fire for the emails that
conspired between them (Revkin, 2009). The biggest problem arose from emails discussing other
scientists that were opposed to climate change and using “tricks” to make their
statistics look a certain way (Revkin, 2009). Additionally, they called into question the work
of scientists that opposed their view on climate change, even bringing up the
idea to challenge their PhD (Revkin, 2009).
Clearly from this example, these scientists’ advocacy got
in the way of the proper use of data and even made them behave with a sense of
immaturity towards scientists who did not believe in their data. Instead of
using the other scientists’ research to better their own, they chose to call in
to question the education of scientists that opposed their view. In science
opposing results create evidence for further investigation, therefore these
scientists left the role of scientist and can no longer be considered the
scientific advocates that they claimed to be.
Advocacy creates a need for moral, ethical, and political
views to be involved to influence your position on a policy. Although science
may be used concurrently with these other things, scientists should present any
and all results and not tell policy makers how to make decisions. To be a
scientific advocate one must leave the realm of systematic study and then can
no longer be a scientist, but an advocate lobbying a specific position. In sum,
scientists should not be advocates because there is an innate conflict between
advocacy and the scientific communication of information and the concept of
science itself, both key roles that scientists must fulfill.
Revkin, A. C. (2009) Hacked email is new fodder for climate dispute. The New York Times. Retrieved
from www.nytimes.com
Cartoon: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-13/climategate---again/2597812
First photo: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-12-13/climategate---again/2597812
Are science and advocacy mutually exclusive? What you described is a situation where scientists let their personal bias get in the way of their science. Scientists are trained not to do this, and to use the scientific method to reason about problems. Therefore the scientists you referenced were acting outside of the scientific code of ethics. Most scientists are able to separate themselves from their personal views, so they could maintain a barrier between their identity as a citizen and their identity as a scientist. There is nothing mutually exclusive about behaving like a scientist sometimes and a advocate at others.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Scientists cannot be both an advocate and scientist at the same time. One is a nonobjective view and the other is an opinionated view, and the two do not go together. The climate change example was very good. It shows a fine example of how scientists biased results and thus made the concept of climate change even more controversial as a result. More people in the public wondered if more scientists were skewing data about climate change for a financial or social gain, and started to question whether scientists should be able to advocate such a hotly debated and controversial topic.
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