Information science for biology

Thoughts on bias are biased, so become a hardcore epistemological realist?

I’m pretty sure there is a reality.

If there isn’t, then what is not reality is so damn convincing, I’m not bothered either way.

Yet one can choose to commit to realism, or the belief that there is one really real reality in which all our observations, perceptions, language, theories and beliefs, have their referents.

And somehow, we can know this reality free from all prejudice – we can know the universe as an unbiased, neutral observer.

Critics of scientific knowledge have claimed that subscribing to realism is bonkers, because bias exists in everything we see or think and believe. Since bias is ingrained into human nature – even that part of human nature which sees itself as scientific and objective – then epistemological realism is a pipedream. We must accept that every theory, even the the fundamental ones that seem to be entirely free of prejudice are, somewhere along the line, polluted by bias.

The author of the paper below,Ingvar Johansson, describes a view of biasism he terms Myrdal’s Biasism which claims the following:

“…we cannot know truths and that we should therefore speak of research results as being true-for-certain-valuations instead of being just true”

Johansson criticises all forms of biasism with several logical arguments, including the paradox that biasism itself would surely be biased, if we were to accept the version above.

Can we biased and align ourselves with epistemological realism? I don’t see why biased research programmes cannot lead to truth. The problem is when our biases blinker us from better truths than what we have now. We can be biased AND appreciate the kind of movement towards more ‘truthlikeness’ described by Karl Popper and explored by Johansson in this same paper.

I see this sort of productive research bias in Thomas Kuhn’s view of science. The interesting part is when the scientist realises these biases are untenable in the face of new evidence, though the process by which one truth is superseded by a better truth is a fascinating one to try and understand.

Revolution? Inspiration? Logical necessity?

dx doi 10.1016/j.jbi.2005.08.005 and FULL TEXT