Xref: utzoo soc.men:2320 soc.women:8717 sci.misc:688 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!homxb!mhuxt!mhuxm!mhuxo!ulysses!gamma!pyuxp!rruxa!mjm From: mjm@rruxa.UUCP (M Muller) Newsgroups: soc.men,soc.women,sci.misc Subject: Re: Rape a reproductive advantage? Summary: scientists who use biased methods . . . Message-ID: <355@rruxa.UUCP> Date: 9 Jan 88 19:09:04 GMT References: <511@gtx.com> Organization: Bell Communications Research Lines: 89 In article <511@gtx.com>, Alan Filipski (al@gtx.com (0732)) writes: > > I reject the > attitude that certain ideas are too politically unpleasant to have > a chance of being true, though. There are a lot of taboo ideas like > this, most of them having to do with race, or heridity vs environment. > Scientists* who study them will get viciously attacked if their data leads > to the "wrong" conclusion. > Scientists have a choice in the methodology they employ. Some methodologies are biased. The biology-is-destiny methodologies are good examples of biased approaches. Behavior genetics statistical treatments tend to lump "environmental" effects in with "error" effects in partialling out variance due to different factors, with the result that "environment" is seldom systematically varied, while "heritable characteristics" are always systematically varied. Sociobiology _starts_ with the notion that complex social behaviors are biologically defined (i.e., chemically, genetically specifiable), and then goes on to study how this "fact" is demonstrated in the behavior of ants and humans. The resulting "findings" are then applied to women, minorities, and new "biologically (genetically)-defined" out-groups, such as people who commit crimes (an alleged heritable tendency -- no social impact on people's behavior here!) or people who are diagnosed as mentally ill (again, an alleged heritable tendency, with no social component). And _then_ these conclusions can have impact directly upon people's lives. Herrnstein proposed ending head start programs because of the alleged heritability of stupidity in blacks. A number of psychological conditions have been assumed to be heritable -- and therefore suitable for forced sterilization as well as indefinite confinement. Recent work has shown these "truths" to be in error -- why were people so willing to accept them for so long? And at such cost to the victims? If you believe that complex behaviors can be directly reduced to genetically-defined traits, then those traits can be linked to other genetically-defined traits, including sex. And if nature has linked those traits that way, then what can the poor behavioral geneticist or sociobiologist do about it? It's just the "natural order," that's all (they say). So they can conclude that complex behaviors are directly reducible to genetic traits, that these traits are linked to other traits that _just_happen_ to be associated with an out-group status in current society, that this is inevitable, and that therefore we must accept it. How strange, how coincidental that these conclusions never contradict the social order. And so they learn: _That's_ why women fare so poorly in employment: they're trying to do something for which they lack the right genes! Likewise blacks. I hope that my sarcasm makes clear that I do not agree with the conclusions described in this paragraph (and I hope that if you quote this paragraph, you will do so carefully, dividing my views from the views I am describing). The "scientific study" of the "heritability of IQ" (or of other behavioral "traits") is rife with suspicious or obviously-flawed methodologies, not to mention outright falsification on a massive scale -- Gould, Rose, Rose, Lewontin, and Kamin have made this case much better than I could, and in very accessible forms (go read them if you think that science in this area is unbiased). Gould and Kamin have been particularly strong on the point that the usual scientific standards are weakened or ignored when someone's allegedly scientific work supports a societal prejudice. They've documented this repeated trend in many many cases, for a total of hundreds of pages of clear, readable prose. I urge you to have a look. So I don't condemn scientists who investigate unpopular notions. I do consider that scientists choose their methodologies for a number of reasons, including how those methodologies support their views of culture, society, and so on (read Laudan on the topic of contributions to scientific thinking which come from areas _external_ to the scientist's own area of research). And I think it is fair to hold people responsible for the methodological models which they choose. Put differently: Many scientists claim that they are results-driven -- i.e., "the data made me do it" (where "it" can mean the sociobiologist's conclusion that certain behavioral traits are heritable, that they _have_been_ inherited differentially in western society, and that this "natural order" is the way things are meant to be -- therefore, it must be Good, or at least inevitable). But read Laudan, or Kuhn: scientific thought is influenced by a priori assumptions and contributions from other areas of science, culture, and so on. Scientists are as responsible as the rest of us for the choices they make -- in how they analyze certain problems, and in whether they choose to investigate certain questions at all. Those choices are fair topics for debate, I think, and for critical examination of social consequences. Michael Muller Bellcore I wish that my views were Bell Communications Research representative of those ..!bellcore!ctt!mjm of my employer.