IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022 - 30

Book Review
is because we believe that he has earned his authority
by having some reliable means of discerning or
discovering what is true.
Many of us were taught in grade school that the
scientific method works something like this: start
with a question, make observations, formulate a
hypothesis, conduct experiments to test the hypothesis,
analyze the results, and then devise a theory
that explains them. While there is no doubt that this
is a scientific method, Oreskes denies that it is the
scientific method: observation does not confirm the
hypothesis that all scientists use this method and
only this method. She endorses Paul Feyerabend's
view, expressed in his book Against Method, that if
you look at what actual scientists in different fields
do, you will see that they employ a wide variety of
methods depending on what best suits the task at
hand. Science is a social activity that seeks to arrive
at a consensus about what is true of the natural
world by weighing a variety of different factors. This
includes things like quantity of evidence, experimental
design, and sample size, but also, because
scientists are human, reputation, individual affinities
or rivalries, prejudices, and so on. One influential
way of putting this point is to say that scientific
knowledge is " socially constructed. "
You might think that if science is unavoidably
social, then it is also unavoidably subjective and
hence unable to get at the truth reliably. In a nice
bit of philosophical judo, Oreskes argues that the
socially constructed character of scientific knowledge
actually provides resources for a strong defense
of science. We know that individual scientists see
things from their own point of view, which necessarily
influences their judgment. But if the community
of scientists includes enough members with varied
points of view, by reviewing and vetting one another's
results, the scientific community can reach a
consensus that corrects for blind spots any given scientist
may have. The social nature of science, with its
strong emphasis on peer review and the replicability
of results, allows scientific communities to approach
objectivity much more closely than individuals
working in isolation could possibly hope to do, no
matter how solid the method they employed.
Oreskes argues for an ideal of science produced
by diverse communities of inquiry where different
viewpoints receive a fair hearing, yielding a
strong, trustworthy consensus. But, as she would be
the first to acknowledge, actual existing scientific
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communities often fall short of this ideal in various
ways. How much should this influence our trust in
them? According to Oreskes, our trust in science is
not a binary matter, but instead a probabilistic one.
A scientific consensus is trustworthy to the extent
that it comes from a scientific community that
approaches her ideal; the more a community deviates
from it through failures of diversity, and so on,
the less trustworthy its findings are.
We know of historical cases where the consensus
of a particular scientific community has been overturned
by later developments. We also know that no
scientific community is perfect. So, how can we rely
on current scientific knowledge when we cannot
be sure it will stand the test of time? Those skeptical
of the scientific consensus on climate changes
or some other issue might argue that since scientists
have been wrong before, why should we trust them
this time? Oreskes devotes the second chapter of her
book, " Science Awry, " to case studies of apparent
scientific consensus going wrong, arguing that in
each case, these failures raised red flags that were
evident not just in hindsight, but also at the time.
Being sensitive to factors that should lead us to view
findings skeptically, withhold judgement pending
further research, and so on will also help us to feel
confidence in cases where these red flags are absent.
One troubling case Oreskes discusses in this
chapter is the embrace of eugenics in the early 20th
century by scientists (as well as by politicians and
other non-scientists). Oreskes argues that this is not
merely a case of the misuse of science for political
ends; there were scientists who presented eugenics
as a straightforward consequence of Darwinian
evolutionary theory. Skeptics of science claim that
this view represented the scientific consensus at the
time, but Oreskes-citing strong contemporary criticisms
of eugenics by sociologist Franz Boas, anthropologist
Margaret Mead, geneticists J. B. S. Haldane,
J. D. Bernal, Julian Huxley, and Herman Muller,
and others-shows that this is far from having been
the case.
We might be tempted here to distinguish between
" purely scientific " objections to eugenics and political
or value-based ones. But, if we take Oreskes'
account seriously, it is not clear how tenable this distinction
is. As we have seen, Oreskes rejects the idea
of any unitary scientific method and instead places
her trust in a diverse scientific community cancelling
out distortions that might arise from individual
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2022

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