On February 3, Lara Wiggert promised us "an interesting next few days,
weeks, months ...." While students in one of my courses are
endeavoring to determine just how interesting the mass media have found
the bST/science/technology issue, I'm ready to conclude that here on
sanet-mg her promise has been amply fulfilled.
With respect to l'affaire Wiggert, it's been tempting to let others
speak for me, particularly in the face of repeated postings condemning
impassioned argument and reasserting "the real purpose of sanet-mg."
Nonetheless, I risk adding to the "clutter." I should note at this
point that I'm doing so on "company" time and on "company" facilities.
But they pay me to be a professor, so profess I shall, with the usual
disclaimer that my views are my own and do not necessarily represent
those of my employer (which, as a publicly supported institution,
studiously avoids having views on anything beyond the proper size of
its budget).
The Feb. 28 posting from rmeyer@usaid.gov (sorry, but no name came with
it) translates into printable language a good deal of what I felt
reading some of the responses to Wiggert's Feb. 8 commentary on
Bauman's list of studies supporting bST safety with regard to human
physical health (something of which, by the way, I am fairly well,
though hardly completely, convinced). As I read it, Wiggert's message
simply pointed out Bauman's affiliations and funding sources -- it in
no way impugned the integrity of Bauman himself, his research, or the
other studies and sources he listed. In fact, Wiggert in a later
posting urged readers to draw their own conclusions from what was
(properly) public knowledge. From these facts, people drew different
conclusions -- some read them as evidence of Bauman's credibility and
expertise, others as reasons for skepticism. So long as no one
disputed the facts themselves (and no one did), where was the problem?
-- it was a matter on which reasonable people might agree to disagree,
where one person's innuendo becomes another's (or, in this case, the
same person's) endorsement.
The point overlooked in many of the responses, the one that left me
saying, "They just don't get it," and that rmeyer makes so well, is
that funding sources, affiliations, ideological biases, and a host of
other things color the work that all of us do. They impinge on our
choice of research problem and methodology, and on our interpretation
of the data we get. Yes, we can be "objective" (read methodologically
rigorous) in gathering our data, but our training and other biases have
already structured the problem for us, and they'll structure the way
we interpret that data, too.
As Luanne Lohr (also on Feb. 28) points out so well, every scientist
ought to recognize that such bias exists and acknowledge that there are
multiple ways to view many (if not all) of the problems we choose
to study or solve. The failure to do so is bad science, and bad
communication as well, in that it withholds information people might
use to draw inferences from what we have to say. If you doubt this,
ask why it is important to you to know the institutional and
disciplinary affiliation of those who make assertions (of any
kind) about bST, or to make known your own when *you* make assertions
about your own science or your own opinions. Bauman's list of studies
(in the Feb. 8 posting to which Wiggert responded) was prefaced with a
statement of credentials -- "Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor, Cornell
University ... eminent dairy scientist, internationally respected, ..."
-- with the aim of helping us put his statement into rhetorical
context.
Going further, I'll assert that the *refusal* to recognize one's biases
and acknowledge that there might be other ways of knowing or making
sense of a topic is arrant scientific arrogance of the kind that has
put land grant colleges (and scientific expertise of many sorts) under
fire. Science is a way of knowing (and often a damned good one, I
might add) characterized by certain rules of evidence. But it's hardly
the only way people make sense of things, nor even always the best way,
and its rules of evidence do not always and everywhere apply. Even
among scientific disciplines the rules for what constitutes valid
evidence (made manifest in method) vary considerably -- what's one
person's control variable is often another's variable of interest.
Arguing that science is value free (by itself hard to do with a
straight face) and that judgments about science and technology, even
among scientists, ought not to involve "non-scientific" values demands
that scientific evidence be granted pre-eminence over knowledge derived
in other ways.
This may be all well and good when it involves matters of theory and
occurs within a scientific discipline or across related disciplines --
it's how theory is advanced. But when we're talking about technology,
as we presumably are on this network, we're talking about applying
knowledge to human activity with some kind of goal, usually a
non-scientific one, in mind. And I don't see any way to judge the
merits of a technology on the basis of science alone (particularly not
if science is presumed to be value free -- can you imagine making a
decision without using any values?). Furthermore, when we're talking
about involving non-scientists in the discussion of our science and
technology, as we presumably are on this network, I don't see any way
to limit that discussion to scientists' values alone.
Re Mac Horton's Feb. 28 suggestion that some of us at land grant
colleges who have joined this discussion might be biting the hands that
feed us, I offer a colleague's explanation of why he's occasionally
critical of the land grant venture: What better way to prove you care
for something you love that to point out that you fear it might be
heading down the wrong path? For myself, I don't mean to condemn the
LGUs, FDA, agroindustry or even agriculture as a whole -- I'm simply
interested in doing what I can to help make the whole thing work a
little better. Granted, I define "better" in terms of my own values,
but I see no more "objective" way to do it.
Gerry Walter Internet: gwalter@uiuc.edu
Agricultural Communications Phone: 217/333-9429
University of Illinois Fax: 217/244-7503
59 Mumford Hall
1301 W. Gregory Dr.
Urbana IL 61801