In the comments to this entry, Aleks points out that the correlations between scientific views and political ideology are not 100%, even at any particular point in time. (In my earlier entry, I had discussed how these political alignments have shifted over time.)
The question then arises: why care about this at all? Why not just evaluate the science on scientific grounds and ignore the ideology?
I’d like to ignore ideology–actually, I personally feel that I can evaluate scientific claims dispassionately–but maybe it’s not so easy. One interesting point made by Ullica Segerstrale in Defenders of the Truth is that, by attacking socobiology on political grounds, the “anti’s” (Lewontin, Gould, Chorover, etc.) reduced the credibility of their scientific criticisms.
In fact, my impression from her book is that Segerstrale herself was somewhat affected in this way, reflexively considering criticisms of sociobiology to be politically-motivated even when they could have just been motivated by scientific skepticism.
For example, one of the heroes of Defenders of the Truth is Bill Hamilton, a British geneticist who came up with some creative and sophisticated ideas in the 1960s on kin selection. In 1973, he presented a conference paper including the following passage (reprinted on page 147 of Segerstrale’s book):
The incursions of barbaric pastoralists seem to do civilizations less harm in the long run than one might expect. Indeed, two dark ages and renaissances in Europe suggest a recurring pattern in which a renaissance follows an incursion by about 800 years. It may even be suggested that certain genes or traditions of pastoralists revitalize the conquered people with an ingredient of progress which tends to die out in a large panmictic population for the reasons already discussed. I have in mind altruism itself, or the part of the altruism which is perhaps better described as self-sacrificial daring. By the time of the renaissance it may be that the mixing of genes and cultures (or of cultures alone if these are the only vehicles, which I doubt) has continued long enough to bring the old mercantile thoughtfulness and the infused daring into conjunction in a few individuals who then find courage for all kinds of inventive innovation against the resistance of established thought and practice.
Segerstrale discusses how this was attacked as “racist”–which seems like overkill–but perhaps does not give enough attention to the idea that this idea of Hamilton’s is just silly. I mean, the idea that the pastoral life is so mellow so that the genes for “daring” disappear, and then they get an infusion of fresh new blood . . . one can certainly see the connection to fascism, but to me it just seems more like overreach: Hamilton did amazing work explaining the existence of altruism under natural selection, and then maybe he got overconfident and thought he had found the key to human history. I’m not surprised that people would find this a bit ridiculous.
I’m not knocking Segerstrale’s book, which had all this information there–I’m just suggesting that maybe the objections to some of the more extreme claims of sociobiology (such as the passage above) could have been scientific as much as ideological.
In summary . . .
I’m saying that ideological views of science are important, not because we should use our ideology to decide what to believe, but because understanding others’ ideologies might help us understand the motivations underlying their beliefs.
(One reason that working on radon was interesting is that there’s no “pro-radon” lobby, and many of the reactions that people have to radon seem purely ideological, depending on how people feel about government regulation, environmental risk, etc.)
To some extent everyone employs "ideology" in thier thinking. To not do so is to assume that there is at least one individual with perfect knowledege of every phoenomena in every discipline, which is obviously impossible. But as a statistician myself using what literature professors would term a "reductionist" argument, I like to think that there are degrees of ideology and these degrees are kind of dynamic function informing scientific opinion and vice versa. Obviously, scientific views and ideology cannot be one to one as, most likely, the two may conflict. But, depending on one's degree of ideology, at best, scientific judgements will be motivated by this ideology and at worst will be influenced by it. One fascinating example of an ideological scientist is the devout Catholic biochemist Marcus Behe.(Marxists aren't that interesting because it's relatively easy to reconcile Marx's materialist method with scientific inquiry).
Behe's essential argument against evolution is that biological systems are such complex systems that they needed the hand of a creator to form. Of course since "complexity" is a relative term that we as humans impose on our understanding of something, such a hypothesis can never be "proven", so we can say that Behe's argument is almost a "pure" ideological construct. But what is interesting about Behe is what Andrew mentions above, how an individual's mind can find a route though which he can reconcile a doctrine of pure faith with one of mostly empirical evidence (I'm talking about biochemistry).
Yes, and sometimes "anti-ideology" can be an ideology also. I get the impression that Segerstrale considers the sociobiologists to be purer–less ideologically motivated–than their critics, and this may influence her to be more on their side scientifically.
Another example is nuclear power. My impression is that there are a lot of pro-nuke people who just assume that nuclear power is a good thing, just because much of the anti-nuke arguments are so clearly ideologically motivated. But of course it's not so simple . . . opposing the devils does not always put you on the side of the angels!
Hmmm. Can a Bayesian really complain about scientists introduce their own subjective ideas into their science?
More seriously, when I read the book, I did wonder what Segestråle's own motivations were – she was clearly involved in the early days of the controversies, so she couldn't be a totally neutral observer.
Bob