Theory of Knowledge - ‘the Ultimate Protection Against Research Error and Bias Is Supposed to Come from the Way Scientists Constantly Test and Retest Each Others Results’ – to What Extent Would You Agree with This Claim
‘The Ultimate protection against research error and bias is supposed to come from the way scientists constantly test and retest each others results’ – To What extent would you agree with this claim in the natural and human sciences.
Human beings are inherently flawed creatures. Through faults in reason and sense perception we interpret the world not as it truly is. Both the Human and Natural Sciences are tools to understand the world and are a lens in which to comprehend ideas not readily available to us purely through common sense logic and sense perception. The implications made in the title are that the inductive scientific method, when removed from error and bias, provides unequivocal and unobjectionable objective truth. The inherent question implies that science provides this truth and the only hindrance is research error and bias rather than fundamental flaws in inductive logic. The title also implies that bias that arises from an individual knower’s perspective is lesser when the same ideas are scrutinised by a group of knowers. This Knowledge issue implies that bias by its nature is removed when scrutinised by more than one knower, but does not take into account collective bias also referred to as institutional bias. Whilst the testing and retesting of each others data does remove an element of uncertainty in the results and conclusions of the data, and repeatability is a fundamental idea in science, repetition does not necessarily remove all levels of uncertainty and bias in the results as implied by ‘ultimate protection.’
An unexamined individual’s perception and reason is clouded significantly by bias. Many knowers in the fields of the Human and Natural Sciences claim to try and remove all bias and subjectivity when forming conclusions and even collecting data ultimately a significant amount of error is still involved. One of the key principles of the scientific method is repeatability. The same experiment can be performed anywhere and yield the
Human beings are inherently flawed creatures. Through faults in reason and sense perception we interpret the world not as it truly is. Both the Human and Natural Sciences are tools to understand the world and are a lens in which to comprehend ideas not readily available to us purely through common sense logic and sense perception. The implications made in the title are that the inductive scientific method, when removed from error and bias, provides unequivocal and unobjectionable objective truth. The inherent question implies that science provides this truth and the only hindrance is research error and bias rather than fundamental flaws in inductive logic. The title also implies that bias that arises from an individual knower’s perspective is lesser when the same ideas are scrutinised by a group of knowers. This Knowledge issue implies that bias by its nature is removed when scrutinised by more than one knower, but does not take into account collective bias also referred to as institutional bias. Whilst the testing and retesting of each others data does remove an element of uncertainty in the results and conclusions of the data, and repeatability is a fundamental idea in science, repetition does not necessarily remove all levels of uncertainty and bias in the results as implied by ‘ultimate protection.’
An unexamined individual’s perception and reason is clouded significantly by bias. Many knowers in the fields of the Human and Natural Sciences claim to try and remove all bias and subjectivity when forming conclusions and even collecting data ultimately a significant amount of error is still involved. One of the key principles of the scientific method is repeatability. The same experiment can be performed anywhere and yield the