Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems

Scientific knowledge and its social problems in a book written in 1971 by Jerome Ravetz. The book contains a reasoned illustration of science as a social process with all the failing and imperfections of human endeavors. Salient aspects of the book are the social construction of facts, science as a craft with essential tacit elements, the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error. The book argues that internal quality control system of industrialized science will suffer severe problems: "The problem of quality control in science is thus at the centre of the social problems of the industrialized science of the present period."

Excerpts from the the 1996 edition, Transaction Publishers New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)

p.22-23 Two separate factors are necessary for the achievement of worthwhile scientific results: a community of scholars with a shared knowledge of the standards of quality appropriate for their work and a shared commitment to enforce those standards by the informal sanctions the community possesses; and individuals whose personal integrity sets standards at least as high as those required by their community. If either of these conditions is lacking-if there is a field which is either too disorganized or too demoralized to enforce the appropriate standards, or a group of scientists nominally within the field who are content to publish substandard work in substandard journals-then bad work will be produced. This is but one of the ways in which 'morale' is an important component of scientific activity; and any view of science which fails to recognize the special conditions necessary for the maintenance of morale in science is bound to make disastrous blunders in the planning of science.

p. 58 The need for good morale is never mentioned in general discussions of science directed to a lay audience; and this is evidence that hitherto its presence could be taken for granted. For doing good scientific work is strenuous and demanding, and the quality of the work done in any field of science is dependent, to a great extent, on the integrity and commitment of the community of scientists involved.

pp. 71-72 (i) "Scientific inquiry is a craft" (ii) "The objects of this work are not natural things, but are intellectual constructs, studied through the investigation of problems" (iii) "The work is guided and controlled by methods which are mainly informal and tacit, rather than public and explicit" and (iv) "The special character of achieved scientific knowledge is explained by the complex social processes of selection and transformation of the results of research"

p. 81 no set of data can be 'perfect' as a report of properties of the objects of investigation, nor can it be independent of the plans and expectations for the later stages of the work.

p. 115 Any serious study of the history of science destroys the assumption of the simplicity of a scientific discovery.

p. 179 For it is possible for a field to be diseased; for the ruling methods to be such that ineffective or shoddy work is accepted or even enforced. But the establishment of the existence of such a condition, and even more the attempts to reform it, are problems of a different sort from those which the field is devoted to investigating. Moreover, while gross errors in technique can be detected by the discovery of pitfalls in published work, the more subtle components of method are not easily accessible to anyone who has not already invested a part of his life in working in the field. Thus, reforming a diseased field, or arresting the incipient decline of a healthy one, is a task of great delicacy. It requires a sense of integrity, and a commitment to good work, among a significant section of the members of the field; and committed leaders with scientific ability and political skill. No quantity of published research reports, nor even an apparatus of institutional structures, can do anything to maintain or restore the health of a field in the absence of this essential ethical element operating through the interpersonal channel of communication.

p. 185 science does not begin with facts; indeed, when facts are achieved (and recognized as such by the community) the process of achievement of knowledge in that particular area of research has passed its most challenging phase and is settling down to a routine.

p. 287-288 [Section ‘Industrialization of Science and Quality Control’] with the industrialization of science, certain changes have occurred which weaken the operation of the traditional mechanism of quality control and direction at the highest level. The concentration of the scientist's audience towards those who advise the agencies has not merely caused in him a tendency to neglect the diffuse consensus of expert colleagues; it has also made him less dependent on the judgement of his lay colleagues in the university system.[…] Under these conditions, the system of assignment of prestige, always a delicate and unstable thing at the best of times, cannot operate to any worthwhile effect. […] The extent to which such developments have already damaged the mechanisms of quality control in science is impossible to estimate. […] there are no direct means whereby anyone outside the world of science can exercise quality control on science. The products of the craft work of scientists are intelligible, and valuable, only to other scientists. […] The problem of quality control in science is thus at the centre of the social problems of the industrialized science of the present period. If it fails to resolve this problem, and does not develop new techniques for restricting prestige and rewards to those who deserve them, then the immediate consequences for morale and recruitment will be serious; and those for the survival of science itself, grave.

p. 295-296 [Section ‘Quality Control of Skilled Tasks: the Insufficiency of Self-Interest’] 'Wherever there's a system, there's a racket to beat it.'

p. 344 any bureaucracy has built-in barriers to the recognition of failure in the performance of its functions.

p.346 [a naïve belief is ] that 'scientific method' can be applied in a simple and straightforward fashion to [practical] problems. [Ravetz gives the example in footnote:] Karl Pearson, in The Grammar of Science, strongly advocates the application of the methods and the results of science to social problems. His chosen example was the problem of the poor; and he used Waissman's theory of the germ-plasm (with reservations in his account of the theory but not in his practical conclusions) to condemn that ill-conceived philanthropy which encourages such 'inferior stocks' either to increase their numbers or to mix with those superior to them.

p. 366 [Chapter on IMMATURE AND INEFFECTIVE FIELDS OF INQUIRY] the difficulties of working in an immature or ineffective field are serious and manifold. Added to the basic difficulties of having to do research in a field where the pitfalls are still unidentified, there are the social constraints forced by the pretence of maturity. The situation becomes worse when an immature or ineffective field is enlisted in the work of resolution of some practical problem. In such an uncontrolled and perhaps uncontrollable context, where facts are few and political passions many, the relevant immature field functions to a great extent as a 'folk-science'. This is a body of accepted knowledge whose function is not to provide the basis for further advance, but to offer comfort and reassurance to some body of believers.

p. 383 [Section Technical and Practical Problems and their Hazards] It is when immature sciences are enlisted for the solution of practical or technical problems that the most severe strains arise. For this engagement inevitably leads to deceptions, of self and others, compared to which those on the academic scene are but minor slips. A discipline which is unable to establish facts even within its closed world of controlled experience is much less capable of genuinely drawing conclusions about the problems of a raw and unstable reality.

p. 386-387 [Section Folk-Science] [folk-science'] is a part of a general world-view, [meant to] provide comfort and reassurance in the face of the crucial uncertainties of the world of experience. […] it can be argued that the 'new philosophy' of the seventeenth century, with its disenchanted and ehumanized world of nature and its appreciation of closely controlled experience, itself functioned as a folk-science for its audience at the time. For, as it appeared then, it promised a solution to all problems, metaphysical and theological as well as natural; and it gained a stable social base long before its achievements were commensurate with any of its claims. Indeed, we may say that the basic folk-science of the educated sections of the advanced societies is 'Science' itself in various senses derived from the seventeenth-century revolution in philosophy.

p. 389 particular results of a matured field may (with suitable interpretation and vulgarization) suddenly become a component of a leading folk-science, and embark on a new career independently of the thoughts and desires of their creator; such was the case with 'Darwinism'.

p. 396 Economics is doubtless the folk-science of all those committed to an economy planned to any degree; in spite of the vacuity, or irrelevance of most of its theory, and the patent unreliability of its statistical information, it ranks as the queen of the sciences in the formation of national policy.38 Debates over economics as a discipline are almost all debates over political economy; and while the critics, of the far Right and libertarian Left, ruthlessly expose its fallacies and inadequacies, academic students are carefully ushered through the accepted doctrines in blissful ignorance of these difficulties.

p. 405 [CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE] For several centuries, the understanding of science has been conditioned by a belief in the separateness of knowledge and society.[…] That simple faith is no longer adequate for its function of maintaining the integrity and vitality of science.[…] The argument of this book has attempted to exhibit the ways in which genuine scientific knowledge can be a product of a social endeavour, and yet embody truth, at least within the fundamental metaphysical framework of the civilization in which it is achieved.

p. 407 No formal system of imposed penalties and rewards will guarantee the maintenance of quality, for the tasks of scientific inquiry are generally too subtle to be so crudely assessed; nor will the advantages to an individual of a good reputation of his group be sufficient to induce a self-interested individual to make sacrifices to maintain it. Only the identification with his colleagues, and the pride in his work, both requiring good morale, will ensure good work.

p. 408 the conditions of industrialized science present [leading scientists] with problems and temptations for which their inherited 'scientific ethic' is totally inadequate.

Ibidem Conflicting ideologies and purposes are at the heart of every urgent practical problem; they lack the accepted criteria of quality for their solution; the sciences involved in them are usually immature; and in their execution they are prone to distortion by the natural tendencies of bureaucratic operation. Because of the increasing recognition of new practical problems, immature sciences are assigned tasks which they are not strong enough to accomplish properly; to their internal difficulties (aggravated by the necessary pretence of maturity) are then added those of hypertrophy. When involved in the solution of practical problems, they also function as folk-sciences; and the resulting confusion of the different sorts of problems and their appropriate styles of work can result in total demoralization and corruption.

p. 418 We can say that an activity is corrupt when the actual goals of the tasks accomplished are contrary to the professed social functions to a degree that a public trust is betrayed.

p. 420 There is naturally a great temptation for the leaders of science to attempt to gain the best of both worlds for as long as possible: to extol the virtues of the free search for truth to one audience, and to promise useful services to another.