ABSTRACT

Science is an ethical community whose practitioners aim to discover information about the natural world and to explain discernible patterns that might be detected. Those who pursue science generally embrace certain epistemic values that help establish the moral boundaries of the community, while the twin pillars of rationality and empiricism serve as the foundations upon which scientists establish their truth claims. Yet however robust the assertions might appear, they nevertheless are the by-products of an exclusively human endeavor directly impacted by those sociological forces that apply throughout the social universe, including the scientist’s social location and the importance of enhancing one’s reputation. The current paper identifies key sociological factors that help shape scientific bias and the nature of the justifications used to defend truth claims. A case study of one community committed to a sociological paradigm demonstrates the utility of the explanatory framework advanced. A more self-conscious awareness of the forces at play that create such biases can help mitigate their deleterious impacts that subvert the quest for explanatory knowledge and valid truth claims about observable phenomena.

摘要

科学是一个伦理共同体，其从业者旨在发现有关自然世界的信息并解释可能被检测到的可辨别模式。那些追求科学的人通常拥护某些有助于建立社区道德界限的认识价值观，而理性和经验主义的双重支柱则是科学家们确立其真理主张的基础。然而，无论这些断言可能看起来多么有力，它们仍然是完全人类努力的副产品，直接受到适用于整个社会领域的那些社会学力量的影响，包括科学家的社会地位和提高个人声誉的重要性。目前的论文确定了有助于形成科学偏见的关键社会学因素以及用于捍卫真理主张的理由的性质。一个致力于社会学范式的社区的案例研究证明了先进的解释框架的效用。对产生这种偏见的力量有更自觉的认识，可以帮助减轻它们的有害影响，这些影响颠覆了对可观察现象的解释性知识和有效真理主张的追求。