On stepping back

We have often commented on what we call 'tribalism', or ideology as it applies to human affairs, science included. Some commenters on those posts, and generally, seem to infer that we are saying that science is not reality-grounded but is just an emotional club that defends its interests.

We sometimes get asked whether we 'believe' in evolution, or genes, or global warming, or religion -- and in fact belief is often the framework in which these issues are discussed. The implication is that because we try to step back and see how humans social structures work generally, and how that applies to science, we must not accept the findings of science.

Nothing could be further from the truth! Yet even an attempt to step back and try to be objective not about the facts or theories themselves, but about how we hold our views and why, seems to be a kind of heresy. That is exactly the point.

In any area about which we write (or about which you may read or in which you may work), we depend on others' ideas, statements, assertions, and work. No one of us knows very much about the actual data in genetics first hand; we learn most of what we know by reading of someone else's work (or from what we find in data bases on the web, but that we did not generate ourselves). Even our own data were produced by a group of technicians, students, and collaborators.

This means that much of science, no matter how it may have objective aspects, is a subjective decision on each of our parts as to what work we accept and why. Who do we trust?

This is a serious question when it's clear that scientists, like others, defend points of view (not to mention vested interests such as their grant base, their tenure, their reputations, &c). It doesn't mean that the DNA sequence I publish is false or made-up. But there may be mistakes: DNA sequencers do make errors. Or I may make assertions about them that go beyond the data and I may know enough about the data to color my analysis in ways that you would have a hard time disentangling, unless you're also an expert.

The struggle in science to be objective, which most of us are engaged in, does not mean that we are fully objective. But it can mean that we tend to believe our own kind of evidence rather than someone else's.

So, yes, we may be predisposed to believe that evolution is a history of life on earth, with genes as important central causal elements. We may believe that the wisest thing is to accept the evidence that major global climate changes are due in large part to human activities that for our future's sake should be changed. And we may not accept the evidence advanced for many kinds of religious claims.

But these are personal judgments. They'll be smiled upon by others with the same beliefs, but not by those with other beliefs. Thus, our circumspection about some kinds of genetics such as the heavy investment in biobanks or GWAS studies, is approved by a minority of people who agree with us, and denigrated (or, mainly, ignored) by others who either are vested in those approaches or who, for whatever reason, think they are good things to be doing.

Understanding a particular science, like genetics, evolution, or developmental biology, is to understand a subset of knowledge gained largely through methods for collecting and analyzing it. But it doesn't remove that activity from the elements that are part of human social behavior. And from time to time in these posts, that is what we are trying to understand.

Stepping back to attempt to do this doesn't imply (or not imply) a particular position that we may personally take on the subject matter at hand.