IF YOU show the same data to a large number of social scientists, it turns out that what they say the data show will depend on their political beliefs. Perhaps that is no surprise: science is done by people; our humanity is involved in the process. None the less, that recent study (by George Borjas and Nate Breznau) caught my eye as part of a growing set of challenges to scientific credibility.
You may think that the natural sciences are different, but there have been some uncomfortable reports there, too. Artificial intelligence is part of the problem, whether it’s used for poor-quality analysis of publicly available health data or for the outright fabrication of results, including images. Science fraud made the newspapers recently when a British sleuth, Dr Sholto David, unmasked it in research papers from a prestigious US laboratory, winning a bounty in the process.
Another recent challenge to scientific reliability is the “replication crisis”, which has particularly afflicted the psychological sciences. Scientists usually publish data only when statistics indicate that what they have seen is not a fluke. In a good number of psychological studies, that has not held up. One example is the claim that simply adopting a facial pose, such as smiling, significantly affects mood. Subsequent studies have not replicated that result.
Fraud may lie behind some of the verification crisis, which can be as simple as not recording all the evidence when it isn’t going to give you an interesting result. Other findings were probably real, but specific to the population that was studied. Replicate the study with different people, and you don’t find it. An important response has been to stiffen what counts as a “significant finding”, raising the bar for how unlikely it has to be that a result came about by chance.
Finally, much is written today about the effects on science of what gets called “values” or “ideology”, depending on your stance. Political stances can police what experiments are funded, influence whether research is published, and determine how data are recorded. Professor Alice Sullivan has recently drawn attention to how beliefs about sex and gender shape scientific research in all those ways. Consider the data angle. Whatever value notions of gender identity may have in other realms of human life, it compromises science when that is recorded instead of biological sex when that matters, as it often does in medical research.
This is quite a litany of woes for contemporary science, and it is far from the truth that all of them are fatally widespread. But they are there; so, what should a Christian make of that?
FIRST, it is healthy to remember that the sciences have their vulnerabilities as well as their glories. Working in the field of “science and religion”, I notice how naturally “pro-science” we tend to be. Respect for science as “truth-seeking” fits well with theological commitments about the goodness and rationality of creation, and the value of truth.
Theologians working on science also often think — reasonably, in my view — that they need to counteract the sorts of unbalanced rejection of science which some Christians show. This should not distract us from being honest about the weaknesses of science and of scientists. That, too, is a way to take science and scientists seriously.
Recognising that the feet of science are not without an admixture of clay may also bolster our confidence in speaking theologically in the public square, where the sciences are too often taken to have the trump card in matters of truth or understanding. Recognising these challenges to science, and that it can sometimes fail, should also counsel theologians who turn to science to show a healthy degree of scepticism (as a good scientist would), looking to the judgement and verification of other scientists before immediately trusting what they read.
Salutary also is a reminder that we are all in danger of seeing what we want to see, and that this also runs to theologians interested in science. There was a time when I was working on mutualism: co-operation between species. I was accused of concentrating on the parts of biology which suited my sunny doctrine of creation. I don’t think that was the case, since I never said that mutualism was the whole story, only that it was a neglected part. None the less, I was glad to have the challenge levelled at me. It is the sort of warning that theologians who work on science should always keep in mind.
The recent trends in reporting on the fallibility of scientists ought to remind us that human beings are finite and always situated or coming from somewhere. We are also liable to sin. As the historian of science Professor Peter Harrison has argued, none of that would have been unfamiliar to the Christian pioneers of early-modern science, who often saw the scientific method as a response to the effects of sin.
On that view, the Fall had affected both things that I have just mentioned. In terms of finitude, some of them claimed, sin diminished our capacities, so that we now needed microscopes or telescopes. That seems to me the less helpful angle. More astute is an observation about sin. Given our capacity to lie, or at least to take short cuts, for the sake of pay or glory, we need processes such as peer review and the testing of our claims by other people to keep us honest.
TOTAL objectivity is impossible in science, since no scientist can completely remove their character, story, and commitments from their work. After all, that’s all part of what makes them a scientist — and, let us hope, a good and honest one — in the first place. None the less, Christians have every reason to suppose that reality matters, and that trying to look it in the face, as objectively as possible, is a vital part of scientific work. The Christian scientist should bring that to their work. Christians more widely should do all we can to support scientists in being careful and honest.
Many of us will have opportunities to show that we value scientific labour and the integrity that it requires, and that we recognise that this can be difficult. And it’s important that science is done well: that the money that we spend should really lead to a better understanding of the world and to new ways to advance human well-being.
I do not think it is, therefore, too pious to end with the suggestion that we can also support science and scientists with our prayers. Honest investigation of the world — resisting the temptations to short cuts and trying to be mindful of bias — is part of the way in which truth is advanced and error and deceit are pushed back.
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. He was previously the Starbridge Professor of Theology and Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
