Applying Scientific Methods Beyond Science

Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay
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It's considered hubris - probably rightly - to think we will ever apply the methods of science to all human affairs, but we can go much further than we presently do in testing ideas. A couple of examples:

Can You Test The Idea?

Does gender-free language reduce sexism?: We might try looking for languages that have, for example, a single pronoun for he, she and it. Turkish does: the single word "o" means he, she or it. In fact, Turkish has no grammatical gender at all. Anyone care to argue that Turkey has gender equality? Going further, it turns out that most languages lack the concept of gender; Indo-European and Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) are the two great families with gender, one of the reasons linguists suspect they share a common remote ancestor. Now it may or may not help our own society to reduce gender-specific terminology (in most cases it can be done so smoothly it's not even noticed) but it's also clear that the most shrill advocates of gender-free language have, at best, a superficial knowledge of language.
Was Piss Christ meant as an attack on Christianity?: The work Piss Christ generated a firestorm of controversy when it was exhibited, in part with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Defenders of the work, a photo of a crucifix in a jar of urine, claimed it was not intended to insult Christians. Bypassing the rich question of how anything so juvenile came to be taken as serious art, the intent of the work strikes me as eminently testable. Create a similar work, a photo of Martin Luther King in a jar of urine, and call it Piss King. See if defenders of Piss Christ react in the same way. Exhibit the work in a black community. Can you predict the response? Would it be justified?

Some key questions we can apply just about anywhere:

What would it take to falsify the belief? What would someone demand as proof that his opponents are right? Failure to deal honestly with this single issue identifies a person as superficial at best, a charlatan at worst.
What happens if you stretch a line of reasoning to its limit? There's a widespread tendency to deny the validity of this method, but if an idea is stretched to the extreme and yields absurd results, you'd better have a convincing argument why the idea as a whole is sound.

Are There Alternative Interpretations?

Public Defenders: Critics of the criminal justice system point out that people with public defenders are convicted 70 per cent of the time, whereas people with private attorneys are only convicted 30 per cent of the time. They argue that defendants with public defenders get a raw deal because public defenders are overworked and underfunded.: Alternative Interpretation: If only 70 per cent of defendants are really guilty, we might as well fire the police and just arrest people at random. More likely, a lot of the 30 per cent of defendants acquitted with public defenders are also guilty, but get off because of insufficient evidence, witnesses who don't show up, and so on. The difference in conviction rates much more likely reflects the extent to which legal maneuvering can subvert the justice system.
Critical Race Theory: Since 1965, America has passed numerous civil rights laws, but minorities still lag behind in many areas. Since we have eliminated the most overt forms of discrimination but still haven't achieved full equality, goes the argument, the problem lies in intrinsic racism in white society.: Alternative Interpretation: Or maybe racism was not - and is not - the principal root of the problem at all. Maybe the remaining problems cannot be fixed by changing white society because they are rooted elsewhere.

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Created 10 December 2001, Last Update 24 May 2020

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