scientific-knowledge

[scientific-knowledge]

Final thoughts on the course! (voice distorted to maintain anonymity)

[scientific-knowledge]

References

6 Must Know Sociological Concepts. www.everythingsociology.com/2013/12/6-must-know-sociological-concepts.html.

Burt, Cora. Personal interview. 10 December 2021.

Chalmers, A. F. “Introducing Falsificationism.” What Is This Thing Called Science?, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis, 2013a. 

---. “Theories as Structures I: Kuhn's Paradigms.” What Is This Thing Called Science?, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis, 2013b.

Douglas, Heather. “Rejecting the Ideal of Value-Free Science.” Value-Free Science?: Ideals and Illusions, by Harold Kincaid et al., Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 120–139.

Firestein, Stuart. Ignorance How It Drives Science. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Goldenberg, Maya J. “A Lack of Trust, Not of Science, behind Vaccine Resistance.” Thestar.com, 9 Nov. 2017, www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/11/09/a-lack-of-trust-not-of-science-behind-vaccine-resistance.html.

---. “Public Misunderstanding of Science? Reframing the Problem of Vaccine Hesitancy.” Perspectives on Science, vol. 24, no. 5, 2016, pp. 552–581., doi:10.1162/posc_a_00223.

Lupien, Natasha. Personal interview. 27 June 2021a.

---. Personal interview. 20 July 2021b.

---. Personal interview. 30 October 2021c.

---. Personal interview. 18 November 2021d.

“One Does Not Simply Pass Philosophy of Science.” Quickmeme, www.quickmeme.com/meme/3rpmts.

Phillips, Katherine W. How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. 1 Oct. 2014, www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/.

Plaisance, K. INTEG 220, class discussion, 10 September 2021a

---. INTEG 220, class discussion, 16 November 2021b

Whyte, Kyle Powys, and Robert P. Crease. “Trust, Expertise, and the Philosophy of Science.” Synthese, vol. 177, no. 3, 2010, pp. 411–425., doi:10.1007/s11229-010-9786-3.

[scientific-knowledge]

Conversation with Biology Teacher

I had a conversation with one of my Biology teachers, and I thought I would summarize some of the things we talked about.

Vaccines

My teacher acknowledged that there are some people that she simply does not see eye-to-eye with. She finds that their idea of science is one that is definite, which we have discussed in class (Plaisance, 2021a) leads to many people having distrust in vaccines and science (and that consequently, education that shows science as not being a definitive thing can increase trust). Additionally, she sees that there some disturbing values that are different from hers, where one student asked her why they would bother saving people, when told that that is one benefit of getting the vaccine. This really brings home Goldenberg’s argument that a difference in values is what causes vaccine hesitancy, rather than ignorance behind the science (Plaisance 2021b).

Ignorance in the Classroom

I remember in class that whenever my teacher did not know the answer to a question, she would admit her ignorance and search it up online. I really connected with this, as it immediately made me think of our Firestein reading, where he argued that there is a big lapse in how students perceive science to be, versus what it actually is. She really talked about her frustrations with how “cookie-cutter” science is from elementary school, and how mechanical science can be in high school (Burt 2021).

Her method for breaking this perception of science as mechanical and standstill first starts in grade nine, where she is breaking the “black and white” thinking that is cultivated around science. By grade 12 however, she is really asking students to think harder about why we do certain things (depending on whether she feels they are ready for it). For example, why would you test something three times, when three is ultimately just an arbitrary number (Burt 2021)? The number of times a scientist tests something demonstrates an epistemic value of how accurate you want something to be, showing that science is not value-free (as shown in the Douglas reading) (Douglas 127-8).

My teacher did note a shift in education where the focus is now on inquiry-based labs, which challenge the student to see how confident one could be of their results, and how little one could get from experiments, as opposed to how much  (Burt 2021). 

Teaching Concepts like Falsificationism, Holism, Inductivism, Values in Science

She basically acknowledged that it’s really difficult to teach, and that most teachers would be completely unequipped to deal with it (especially since many may not have the same background as her, where she got a PhD in Biology and so she is aware of all these epistemic issues firsthand). There are also political pressures over what should be taught (which, going back to Douglas, is a non-epistemic value from society that makes science not value-free) (Douglas 127-8), and also a variety of students, many who may ultimately not be interested in science at all (Burt 2021).

Diversity in Research

She noted that there was a lot of white during her time as a PhD student, despite the advisor being Canadian and that “inviting diversity”. Particularly, the advisors were mainly white men, and the females were also white. The female advisors commented on how they had to have a “certain personality” to elbow their way into top positions, which further degrades diversity (Burt 2021). This is really unfortunate to see science’s diversity problem validated, especially seeing how through our Phillips reading we saw how diversity could increase creativity and productivity in teams (Phillips 2014).

Readings referenced: Firestein, Douglas, Phillips

[scientific-knowledge]

Thoughts on Vaccine Hesitancy with Friend

When I wanted to meet up with my friend in July, I asked her whether she was going to get her second shot. To my surprise, she responded with “I’m not getting the vaccine” (an aside: she did end up getting the vaccine due to Quebec’s mandates) (Lupien 2021a). This was a complete shock to me, since I saw her as a pretty intelligent person, and I always portrayed many vaccine-hesitant people to be right-wing, not very bright trolls on Twitter. This got me to ask a lot of questions, and her reasons are summarized below:

The immunity provided by the vaccine isn’t complete enough for it to be worth it at her age to take the risk of taking a relatively new vaccine  (Lupien 2021a).

In particular, she has had concerns about fertility, especially after seeing lipid particles related to the vaccine being highly concentrated in the ovaries right after vaccination (Lupien 2021b).

She would rather run the risk of getting COVID herself (obviously while taking steps to ensure others are not at risk of infection from her) (Lupien 2021a).

The pharmaceutical industry is mostly controlled by the United States, whose healthcare system is private. Therefore, the priority is on remedies that will generate them the most money, and corners can often be cut.

For example, Pfizer has had a history of lawsuits filed against them for other vaccines  (Lupien 2021a).

Her mom has first-hand experience working as a biomedical engineer in the United States, so she knows how atypical the approval process was for COVID vaccines compared to other vaccines  (Lupien 2021c).

I tried looking at it from a compassionate lens, including just having a genuine conversation and trying to listen to her perspective. However, now knowing Maya Goldenberg’s argument around vaccine hesitancy, I am much better able to understand why she feels this way (specifically for COVID).

Firstly, she is definitely an intelligent individual (despite her self-deprecation), and so infographic-style content is definitely not the appropriate way to reach out to a person like her. In fact, when I tried doing this with a CNN infographic on Instagram, she mentioned that it was insulting in general. Rather, it seems that she has values and thoughts that put her at odds for COVID vaccination:

She has high standards for safety. Knowing how the vaccine process usually works (e.g. it is tested on all age groups before being approved), she felt it was worrying that Emergency Use Authorization was given so quickly (Lupien 2021a).

She is distrustful of the healthcare industry in the United States, and the profit-driven motivations behind vaccines. She believes that corners could’ve been cut to obtain more profit sooner(Lupien 2021a).

She values fertility, and may want to have children herself. To potentially jeopardize that, or to potentially subject her eggs to something that would be harmful to a resulting baby is something she is not willing to risk (Lupien 2021b).

She has seen how someone she trusts (both on a personal and an epistemic level) feels about the approval process. Obviously, this is an opinion you might hold a bit higher than a random person on Twitter  (Lupien 2021c).

Here, we can really see how the Deficit Model, which assumes that one is deficient in scientific knowledge, is problematic, and how the Contextualist Model, which acknowledges that there are so many factors behind vaccine hesitancy, can be helpful here (Goldenberg pp. 573-4, 2016).

This is all consistent with Maya Goldenberg’s argument, which is that vaccine hesitancy isn’t caused by a lack of scientific expertise or knowledge--in fact, I would say my friend is more educated than most people, considering she excelled in CEGEP and is doing Cognitive Science at McGill--but by a lack of trust (Goldenberg 2017). Here, we can see multiple areas where distrust could develop, leading to a hesitant individual.

Later, when I asked her why some individuals may prefer therapies (which are similarly experimental) over vaccines, she mentioned this:

“The medical system is imperfect. If you’re living with a chronic, recurring problem that doctors don’t really know how to solve, and that they’re downplaying your symptoms ... it can be extremely frustrating for those people. Those people will often turn to avenues like functional medicine ... if the medical system says it knows what’s best for me, yet wasn’t able to acknowledge and heal the symptoms that I had, how do I know it has my best interests at heart?” (Lupien 2021d)

This immediately made me think about our Whyte and Crease reading, specifically with unrecognized contributor cases (this was actually what inspired short essay #2!). Specifically, I realized that unrecognized contributor cases, where scientists dismiss the knowledge of those who have an inherent stake in the experiment they are conducting, but who may not necessarily have deep scientific knowledge, fit really well in this context (Whyte and Crease 415). In this case, medical practitioners were the ones dismissing the knowledge of their patients! Of course, if you are experiencing very real pain and doctors are saying you are not, that is going to result in less trust in healthcare as an institution.

Overall, Goldenberg, Whyte, and Crease all really helped me to understand better why people like my friend exist, despite being highly intelligent individuals.

Readings Referenced: Goldenberg, Whyte and Crease

[scientific-knowledge]

How my view on science changed

WHAT IS A SCIENCE?

I remember a distinctive moment in grade 12 where I was talking with two of my science teachers. One taught Biology and Chemistry, while the other taught Physics. I am honestly not sure what we were talking about (pre-COVID times seems like ages ago now), but I remember mentioning to them that my social sciences teacher talked about how the sociological concept of “diffusion” was like its biological equivalent. Predictably, both science teachers met that with a lot of skepticism, and told me that they really weren’t the same thing.

At that moment, I could understand their point of view, but also felt at the same time that this “dismissal” of the social sciences (even though I’m sure that my two science teachers did not intend for it to come across as that way) was a huge problem. To me, my definition of what makes a discipline scientific revolved around its ability to be empirical, or to be based on observations that were seemingly “objective”, or without any human bias. This definition fit well with many different social sciences (especially ones like psychology), many of which have leaned toward this way of studying their fields, leading me to believe they were also “sciences”. However, after learning about falsificationism and holism, I am far less certain that they could be classified this way.

For those unfamiliar with what falsificationism is, it is essentially the principle that all statements in science have to be falsifiable, which means that they have to be able to be proven either true or false via observations. The creator of this philosophy, Karl Popper, believed that scientific disciplines can never reach the full truth, but that they can only continue proving things wrong and making conclusions based on the remaining things that were not proven to be right (Chalmers 2013a, n.p.g.).

Likewise, holism (in a philosophy of science point of view) is a philosophical viewpoint that was developed by Thomas Kuhn. His account of holism states that no scientific discipline can ever reach the truth and that instead, they jump between different paradigms of thought (Chalmers 2013b, n.p.g.) . For example, Physics had a paradigm shift from Newton to Einstein, and Mathematics (side note: I am also uncertain that mathematics could be called a “science”, but that is a topic for another time) had a paradigm shift from mathematical completeness to incompleteness. 

Fields of social science can arguably fulfill falsificationism and/or holism. For example, in Economics, the idea that government intervention will always result in lower inflation can be falsified through observations; if there is government intervention and higher inflation, that statement is falsified. In Economics, specifically the field of Game Theory, individuals within the field generally work under one paradigm that focuses on concepts such as Nash Equilibrium, which is the idea that individuals will veer toward a result where neither can deviate and be better off.

However, the social sciences frequently hit a snag when it comes to Kuhn’s idea of what science is. Because there can sometimes be so many competing theories for a single social scientific concept (e.g. in Sociology, where there are four main paradigms!) (6 Must Know Sociological Concepts., n.d.), this violates the idea that scientists would be aligned within one single paradigm. This is what makes me more hesitant to freely equivalate the social sciences with the natural sciences.

Readings that inspired this reflection: Chalmers Chapter 5, Chapter 8

[scientific-knowledge]

Self-deprecating meme to start off my reflection!

Credit: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3rpmts

(One Does Not Simply Pass Philosophy of Science., n.d.)