Lewontin's Skepticism Necessary?

Skepticism is essential to the pursuit of the scientific method. However, a balanced use of it is also necessary. Too much skepticism would make it very difficult for a scientist to arrive at a conclusion. Too little skepticism and said scientist would agree too readily with a proposed conclusion. Charles Lewontin, in his book The Doctrine of DNA: Biology as Ideology, lays out a case for why it is reasonable to be skeptical of science. I agree that the practice of science is largely controlled by social forces, and that therefore a critical eye is necessary when interpreting its results. Firstly, the boundaries by which we measure scepticism must be defined. Although scepticism is healthy, taken to the extremes (too much or too little) scepticism can have an adverse effect on the practice of
An ideologue has an inherent motivation to use scientific research to confirm the tenets of his ideology, rather than to objectively examine the world. It is probable that an ideologically possessed scientist would intentionally design a bad experiment, in order to produce the results that best confirmed the construct of the ideology. The informed reader would recognize the signs of this kind of deception, but for those without such knowledge, a sceptical perspective would prevent the immediate absorption of ideologically biased findings. Later in the piece, Lewontin goes on to compare science to the Christian church, in order to demonstrate that science attempts to explain the world in a similar way. He notes that they both share a “supra-human” source, in that while Christianity is knowledge revealed by god, science is demonstrated to be so objective that it is “true for all time.” (Lewontin 5) Finally, he notes that they are both sufficiently complex as to require being explained by someone perceived to be an expert. He