Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal, and: Philosophy of Science after Feminism (review)

Over the past decade, philosophers of science have engaged in intensive self-reflection about the scope, aims, and methods of their subdiscipline. Feminist philosophers of science and science studies scholars have successfully moved the question of science and social values to the field's forefront. Recent publications, including a 2010 Synthese special issue edited by Kathryn S. Plaisance and Carla Fehr titled "Making Philosophy of Science More Socially Relevant," and a much-discussed 2011 article by leading philosopher of science Philip Kitcher titled "Philosophy Inside Out," argue that philosophy must reorient itself toward questions of practical and public import. The founding of the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice, the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, and the Public Philosophy Network is evidence that these intellectual trends are making institutional inroads.

Two stimulating recent books, Heather E. Douglas's Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal (2009) and Janet A. Kourany's Philosophy of Science after Feminism (2010), advance a new plank in these discussions. Douglas and Kourany assert that, while philosophers of science have rejected the inaccurate image of science as ideally "value-free," they have not yet found a satisfactory alternative conception of the role of values in scientific practice. They set themselves the task of constructing a positive normative account of the role of social values and responsibilities in scientific work.

Douglas's audience, she writes, is the science advisor, the scientifically trained individual who interprets science for policy makers or who offers direct scientific testing of policy options and their range of risks and outcomes. Philosophers of science have neglected this particular node of science/society engagement, and it is worthwhile to reflect upon it as a potentially fruitful area for philosophical engagement. In Douglas's view, the science advisor is in need of a richer and more accurate conception of science and politics than one that presumes the autonomy of science from society and that holds the quality of "value neutrality" above all others as a scientific ideal—and philosophers are well-positioned to be of service.

Douglas begins with the premise that scientists have a moral responsibility to consider the potential consequences of scientific error and uncertainty. Here, Douglas sources arguments from moral philosophy that establish our responsibility for foreseeable consequences of our actions, even when unintended. Because error and uncertainty are indelible elements of scientific practice, particularly in the areas of science most likely to be relevant to and implicated in human politics and social values like medicine and the environmental sciences, this results in a rather significant ongoing responsibility for scientists to actively consider the consequences of their knowledge claims. As Douglas points out, this responsibility is consistent with the ideals of rigor and transparency already encoded in widely accepted principles of scientific research ethics, such as the honest reporting of data, open discussion of scientific results, and fair consideration and evaluation of the work of others.

There is much that is worthy about this formulation of scientific responsibility. It is novel, practical, uncontroversial, and, if widely implemented, likely to make a real difference. Yet, it is a very narrow view of scientists' moral responsibilities that fashions them as primarily located in clarifying and emphasizing the importance of uncertainties in their scientific findings. More severely, such a vision of scientific responsibility relies on a rather mythical conception of how science functions. Douglas claims, for example, that "[b]ecause scientists work in . . . communities, in near constant communication and competition with other scientists, what is foreseeable and what is not can be readily determined" (83). While one might concede that scientific communities have unique discursive features contributing to the "ready determination" of the certainty and potential consequences of scientific findings, a lack of consensus on core empirical values and ultra-specialization that...