Scientific Objectivity (Summary)

by Eleonora Montuschi

The question over the objectivity of the social sciences: can the social sciences be as
objective as the natural sciences? This comparison was premised on the belief that natural
sciences are the better sciences.

Both the comparison and its premise have a historical grounding and a philosophical
motivation behind them; modern science emerged in the seventeenth century while the social
sciences followed much later, in the nineteenth century.

Philosophically, the modern image of science associates science with method; a set of rules of
reasoning completely separate from either individual judgment or social context.

The behavior of society and of individuals started being looked at as objects of scientific
inquiry. However, it was taken for granted that scientific knowledge of any social phenomena
could only be pursued by adopting the method and logic of natural science.

The call for objectivity in social sciences focused on three main demands:

1. Grabbing only onto real objects and real facts, meaning that to be ‘really there’ for a
social fact is, however, less intuitive than for a natural fact. Can there be an objective
reality that exists partly because of human agreement as in the case of social norms
and conventions?

2. Driving out values from descriptions and explanations. Values might be present in
science, yet they should not only be employed in establishing scientific results. In
social science we should try to separate facts and values and keep values at bay as far
as possible.

An example might be that in support of the hypothesis that different races are
intellectually unequal, some theorist could adduce, among other things, some
racially motivated belief concerning certain groups of people which would
translate in forcefully reaching the conclusion that a certain race is more
intelligent than another and encouraging a certain reading of the results
offered by purportedly ‘objective’ measurement. This scenario would make
the objective credentials of the conclusions controversial.

Value freedom then faces a special challenge in the social domain where it proves
more difficult to keep values interfering with factual descriptions, and where in some
cases they simply can’t be eliminated, as they are so finely engrained in theories and
background assumptions concerning people and human nature.
 3. Using only method likely to secure true outcomes. The divide between quantitative
and qualitative has had profound effects on the image and status of social science,
with disciplines such as economics being taken more prominently as ‘sciences’ than
other social sciences precisely because of their quantitative methodological
orientation. Recently, in areas such as education, crime, child welfare, and
development economics, the belief in the objectivity of numbers has led to favoring
procedures that are deemed ‘mechanical’ over those that require judgment or
background knowledge.

The image of science appears misleading for the natural sciences themselves. More attention
has been given to the role theories have in ‘constructing’ models of the facts they refer to
rather than in ‘discovering’ facts in a world where these simply pre-exist theories.

These 3 demands tend to appear at the forefront of any discussion regarding scientific
objectivity, so the text will analyze these 3 demands while keeping an eye at what the
received view asks social science to comply with and on how the actual practice of social
research achieves its best results.

The Ontological Demand: ‘Only Real Facts’

While in natural sci- ence it seems intuitive that gasses, molecules, and heat exist before
science sets out to investigate them, this appears less intuitive for the objects investigated by
the social sciences.

Distinction between ‘brute’ (those that would existe even if humans do not exist) and
‘constructed’ facts (those that owe their existence to human activity and belief).

Social kinds are, according to Hacking, interactive precisely in the sense that individuals
knowingly interact with the ways they and others are classified and often their behavior is
affected as a consequence.

Forcing comparisons between natural and social sciences and expecting some substantial
similarity in return is a faulty move. The objects of knowledge that social science deals with
might well be classified at the same time as indifferent and as interactive kinds. For example,
an autistic child.

The Epistemological Demand: ‘no values’

A typical philosophical distinction is that between the way things are and how we would like
them to be, or how we think they ‘ought’ to be. (Factual and normative divergence). It has
been often argued that in order to be objective, science should only describe facts.

Max Weber engineered a strategy that entailed a distinction between ‘value judgements’ and
‘value relevance’. Social scientists, says Weber, should avoid making value judgments in
teaching social science and in making claims in social science; they can instead allow value
relevance in scientific inquiries. For Weber, it is just a matter of finding an appropriate role
for the values to play.

An instructive case of how values enter the domain of scientific analysis and drive them in
specific directions is the ‘discount rate’ controversy regarding climate mitigation. The start
point was the task of answering ‘How much should we invest today in reducing carbon
emissions to save future generations?’. In 2006, the Stern analysis was caused of having
imported value judgements. Stern would not have stuck only to ‘the lore of the market’ and
by doing so he apparently made his assessments biased.

By reading the market behavior, one could say that in general people do not save at a rate that
suggests they value their future states as much as they value their current states. Stern instead
seems to make his choice of treating everyone (current living humans and the future
generations) equally on the basis of moral considerations rather than market readable data.

The Stern review is then criticized for using a value-based rate rather than the objective
observable market saving rate. However, Stern and other argue in reply that it would be a
conceptual mistake to use the observed saving rate, this, among other reasons, because:

1. What is at stake is social policy and not one’s own feelings about one’s own future. So
it should be settled by what we ought to do, not what we do do.
2. Savings rates do not express what the savers think they ought to do for future
generations, only for future selves.

The Methodological Demand: ‘Follow the Best Method’

Can some methods be objective in principle? For example, can they secure objec- tive results
because of the way they are designed?

Numbers as the Route to Objectivity

Rigorous formal methods are normally opposed to qualitative methods. By subscribing to this
view the social sciences, where qualitative methods find a natural home, often resort to
translating them into quantitative formats.

By prioritizing quantity over quality it is believed that bias and judgement are minimized. For
this reason, the demand for objectivity has often driven a preference for quantitative methods
over qualitative.

Quantification is a safe ‘technology of distance’ — distance from judgement, from

subjectivity, distance from bias.
An objective sociological explanation should target suicide as a collective social
phenomenon; it should look at rates of occurrence of suicide: rates display enough stability
and enough variability to show that suicide is a recurrent phenomenon in every society but
also it shows that within each society unequal distributions of occurrences among, say,
different racial, religious, or professional groups cannot be accounted for simply by referring
to psychological traits of individuals.

As J. Douglas illustrated, the first problem in analysing official statistics on suicide rates (or
any rate of anything) is one of definition. There are different possible ways for a death to be
described as a suicide (e.g. is drinking yourself to death a case of suicide?). A statistic of
‘suicides’ can seem to presuppose what in fact needs to be explained or established in the first
place, i.e. what counts as a suicide.

Any method of categorization require decisions as to how, for example, we might restrict the
boundaries of the category. These decisions cannot be taken for granted since the choices
made by the compiler(s) of the statistics affect the interpretation of the words that the
sociologist does with them.

Another pressing concern involves the evidential grounds these statistics are based on.
Sources are often not neutral providers of evidence.

Pointing out the problems associated with assembling official statistics is meant to discourage
the belief that quantitative procedures can be taken for granted, namely that they are
methodologically best equipped on their own to guarantee a most objec- tive representation
of social phenomena.

Best Methods in Principle

Claiming objectivity for results that we obtain only on the basis of what we consider to be
rigorous, or established knowledge, neglecting issues of application and context, and failing
to consider how these results combine with other potential sources of knowledge, will
translate not only into a restrictive, inadequate view of what to count as objective. More
worryingly, all this might inform courses of action which prove inefficient, ineffectual, or
detrimental.

Conclusion

Producing scientific knowledge concerning society used to be justified by the aim of attaining
understanding and control over emerging social problems similar to the understanding and
control that the natural sciences possess over the world of nature. Control meant prediction;
the chance of taking social issues into account early enough so it becomes possible to solve
them before they become detrimental.
Social science was meant to be the provider for desviación-making and for social action.
How can we trust social science in its applied role? The best way to instruct this route is via
quantitative methods, so the argument goes. However, the text has gathered reasons to
disbelieve that such a picture is adequate.

Factual information is apparently value-laden in a plurality of ways. Value-ladenness is then

an aspect of factual information that cannot simply be set aside.

How can we still make sense of objectivity as a regulatory principle of social scientific
inquiry and of social practice? To answer this question a list of pointers can help in
identifying some of the issues:

1. There is a sense in which the objects of any science are partly real and partly
constructed, so comparing natural and social science in terms of a rigid divide
between what is ‘really’ there and what is not appears ill-conceived from the start.
How facts are identified, how they are described, classified, and used as relevant
empirical tools of inquiry.

2. The presence of values in scientific inquiry is not ‘bad’ in principle, it becomes so

when values are ignored, or when tacitly adopted.

3. Under what conditions are methods put to work? The objectivity of their results is not
guaranteed when shifting from the ideal to the applied, or from one real setting to
another.

4. Learn how to question the objectivity of claims. Without giving precedence in

principle to particular methods (e.g. quantitative over qualitative); and be open to
using a plurality of methods if the phenomena under study so require.

5. Consider that a more inclusive concept of objectivity in social soccer need not lose its
grip on reality. Understood in this more inclusive and contextual way, objectivity
might become a more realistic, yet not less satisfying, goal to pursue.