Although the objective knowledge is always used
for something else, the value of the objectivity is not relative to the
peculiar interests of people. The long term authority of science is related to the
extent science sticks to reality, to the continuous effort of scientists to
describe the reality. The value of objectivity reflects the general interest of society for stability, resilience and
adaptive capacity to a changing reality of the natural, economic, social and
cultural environment. It is of huge interest to clearly delineate what is
objective science, and what is not. To do this is part of the mission of
academic organisations, where the objective knowledge is produced and
reproduced. Defending objectivity does not mean despising the interests of the
people and of the groups. On the contrary, it means honestly serving these
interests as a scientist, or as philosopher, by delivering a good quality
product, objective knowledge. In this text we will introduce a concept of fake
science and will show its relevance for problems on the public agenda.
We define fake science based on the criteria of
methodology of production and ideological influence on the production
of the scientific cultural objects as follows:
·
fake
science is a cultural product presented as science which is at the same time
methodologically problematic and ideologically driven (table 1, up-right
square).
The evaluation of science is done at the level
of a single cultural product (primary article, secondary article - review or
tertiary source book or chapter). The overall evaluation of a project, program,
school of thought, field of knowledge, whole discipline is the results of
aggregation from individual cultural products. Thus, in our view there is no
way to describe for instance gender studies as fake science without an
analytical investigation of all publications in this field.
Table 1 Matrix for the identification of
fake science, with several potential examples (reasonable hypothesis about fake
science cases).
|
|
A Methodologically sound science
|
|
|
|
yes
|
No
|
B Ideologically driven science
|
yes
|
Research agenda driven by ideological
motivations or by public policies
·
Sustainability theory with reductionism to physics. Models should be
useful for public goals.
·
Descriptive study of the cultural gender processes (sound gender
science)
|
Fake science
Fake models of man:
·
God and soul as explanatory variables in physiology (Nicolae Paulescu)
·
Lysenkoism, darwinism without genetics, “matter” and “internal
contradictions” as explanatory variables / processes in biology and ecology.
·
Post-normal (transformative) versions of sustainability theory
·
Normative gender studies (fake gender science).
|
No
|
“Pure” science,
Research agenda driven by sake of knowledge
Models
constrained only by internal (normative) epistemic constraints, elegance, etc
|
Pseudo-science
naïve
pseudo-scientific models of man
|
Methodology (A in table 1) is evaluated based
on the following criteria:
·
Regional ontology criteria. The variables and processes in need
for explanation or used for explanation are those characteristic to that field
of knowledge. Characteristic means generally accepted as legitimate by
scientists working in the field. For instance physics cannot use as explanatory
variable intentions, biology cannot deal with economical process, and so on.
·
Regional data production criteria. The variables and processes in need
for explanation or used for explanation are either measurable and empirically
describable using measurements and observations which can be replicated, or
they have an heuristic value for the development of research directions which
are based on standard measurements, data processing, and hypothesis testing
accepted in that scientific community. For instance hidden variables are
acceptable only when hypothesis about them can be indirectly tested, abstract
mathematical models about complex processes are acceptable only when they can
reasonably be used for the interpretation of empirical data, theological and
common sense variables like soul, God, angels, are not acceptable inside
scientific cultural products because their observation cannot be replicated by
any scientist.
·
Internal validation of regional
knowledge criteria.
The data and knowledge produced is validated by the system accepted in the
scientific community (some kind of peer review independent of any conflict of
interest).
·
Contextualization of regional
knowledge criteria.
The regional knowledge is presented explicitly at the appropriate scale, for
the specific class of variables and processes. There is an explicit delineation
from knowledge produced in other fields which might confound the reader by
homonymy of terms.
The criteria can be applied not only to nature
sciences, life and earth sciences or social sciences, or psychology, but also
to part of the humanities when these scientists work on existing cultural
products (analysis of structure of existing theories, or of previous
philosophical arguments in specific texts – in philosophy, of literature books,
tradition in philology etc). The time scale for the methodological analysis is
the duration of the production process, from project formulation to publication
of the scientific piece of knowledge.
A scientific product can be fake when it is flawed
from ontological point of view, or is data production and interpretation
flowed, or flowed from the point of view of its internal validation .
The influence
of ideology (B in table 1) on science is evaluated based on the following
criteria:
·
Goal formulation criteria. The goals and values motivating
the formulation of public policies or policies of religious organizations and
the associated civic sector asking for the production of scientific cultural
products are ideological when they are not accepted by all political
organizations relevant for that political system, or by all religious
organizations of any kind, and the associated civic sector. By relevant we mean
that the organizations are validated by citizens in the existing political
procedures. By accepted we mean that they are prioritized high and funded
whoever is in power from the political organizations. The time scale of
analyses for this criteria is at least one-two decades.
·
Funding criteria. The extent to which funding for the
production of science is provided not by competition of projects selected based
criteria related to the scientific content and management of the project, but
by the political or religious profile of the applicant or its relatives and
friends.
·
Knowledge use criteria. The extent to which the scientific
products are used by their authors for the production of different
non-scientific cultural products which are ideological in terms of the previous
two criteria.
·
Accuracy of knowledge transfer
criteria. The
extent to which all methodological criteria are presented in summary together
with the scientific findings when the transfer of the scientific knowledge is
delivered as scientific truths to the end-users.
Comments
This framework can be used for the conceptual
delineation of discourses which are legitimate in academic institutions and
those which are legitimate only outside academic institutions (excepting for
the case when they are an object of research for real science in academic
institutions).
We assume that fake science is useful outside academic institutions, because it
responds to needs of people (to have cheap and apparently coherent visions of
the world), needs of political organizations (to have efficient ideologies),
and of the state (to have cheap unifying political discourses). Fake science is
a simplistic presentation of real science content for some purposes and make
use of the authority of real science to reach those purposes. A vision of the
world is defined here as the hierarchical system of signs (from single signs to
complex texts) considered by an
individual human to have real referents. Visions of the world in this sense
emerge by processes from individual to groups of different dimensions, and can
be characterized in their structure and dynamics at in individual and group
level in a scientific way.
A particular case is fake science with respect
to man. People, parties and the state need a more or less uniform model of man
in a society, a model perceived locally as “general”. Such a model should be easy
to understand and cheap to educate. There is in principle the possibility to
produce a general, realistic, and universal model of man, but this would be a complex
enterprise and expensive to teach. A potentially general model of man is,
however, considered here as desirable and ontologically stable. The state could
invest in its production in order to minimize conflicts between the adepts of
fake scientific models of man, and in this way increase its stability and
resilience. Discourses suggesting the change of the essence of man because of
technology, or of cultural evolution, or by other causes are considered here as
cultural products without scientific and philosophical relevance for how man
can be conceptualized, and probably having a
disruptive function in the state.
Conclusions
We have proposed a concept of fake science,
methodological criteria to map such cultural products, and have shown the relevance
of this framework for the model of man functional in a society. Existing discussions
in the public space could gain in clarity after the systematic application of such
ideas, in this form or in an improved ones, in the long term benefit of the state,
of the society, and of the people.
Note
This document develops ideas presented last
year at a conference organized by the institute of advance studies of the
University of Bucharest:
·
Iordache
V., 2019, Anthropological frameworks and their impact on socio-biological
paradigms and research traditions. The case of the model of man in Romanian
biology, presentation at the International Conference Social impact and the
social sciences: theory and practice in the era of propaganda, fake news and
media manipulation, ICUB-Social Sciences, University of Bucharest, presentation
available here.
I am indebted to Prof. Dragoș-Paul Aligică for
the invitation to this conference.
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