This seems to imply that science is somehow free from motivated cognition — people looking for evidence to support their biases. Since other fields of human reason are not, it would be astonishing if science were.
(Bear in mind, I use “science” mostly as the name of a social institution — the scientific community, replete with journals, grants and funding sources, tenure, and all — and not as a name for an idealized form of pure knowledge-seeking.)
Sure, but I often see this sort of argument used against concerns about bias in (claimed) scientific conclusions. I’d rather people didn’t treat science as privileged against bias, and the quote above seems to encourage that.
This seems to imply that science is somehow free from motivated cognition — people looking for evidence to support their biases. Since other fields of human reason are not, it would be astonishing if science were.
(Bear in mind, I use “science” mostly as the name of a social institution — the scientific community, replete with journals, grants and funding sources, tenure, and all — and not as a name for an idealized form of pure knowledge-seeking.)
I take the quote to be normative rather than descriptive. Science is not free from motivated cognition, but that’s a bug, not a feature.
Sure, but I often see this sort of argument used against concerns about bias in (claimed) scientific conclusions. I’d rather people didn’t treat science as privileged against bias, and the quote above seems to encourage that.