One of the more interesting ethical problems in the Anthropologists cannon is the question of when you are required to lie.  For me, it is not only three particular question of when you must lie but, in reality, the perceptual assumptions that structure that “ethical” injunction.  This wasn’t much of a problem for me in my MA fieldwork, since the underlying assumptions behind the injunction happened to match the assumptions of the people I was working with but, for my Ph.D. fieldwork, they were totally opposed.

The general “rule” is that you lie to protect your sources.  Indeed, this point is quite firmly made by an AAA ethics case study where the researcher had information about a murder. The “dilemma” and its “solution” are given as

Thompson’s Dilemma: (1) Since she knew the police would question her, should she quickly tear out and destroy the pages in her notebook where the events were recorded? (2) When questioned by the police should she, like the other villagers, plead ignorance concerning the killing?

Thompson’s Decision

Thompson decided to risk discovery of her field notes and consequently hid the notebook containing the description of the events surrounding Tom’s death under coverings on her bed. When police asked her if she knew anything about Tom’s death, she denied having any knowledge of the events of that evening. The police accepted her statements and did not search for her field notes.

When I quoted this case study earlier, I noted that

In other words, she lied to a foreign government’s officials, helped to subvert their laws and, at the same time, was stupid enough to keep evidence of her lies which, if uncovered, would have materially damaged the reputation of any other Anthropologist working in that nation.

So, for the AAA, lying is perfectly acceptable under certain circumstances.  Indeed, ethnographic writing, as a genre, accepts this assumption when it comes to the identity of informants, often requiring that any identifying information be stripped out of any documents if there is any chance that “harm” may come to the informant as a result of that information being published.

This particular type of lying is endemic to the social sciences.  For example, in Psychology, articles on individual psychopathologies use code names for the individual patient, while in Sociology the general convention is to change the names of any organization studied.

Rationalized lying as an act of “faith”

The rationale for this type of lying is simple  - you are required to lie in order to “protect” your sources.  Now, this sounds fine but, underlying it all, is a worldview and level of hubris that is quite astonishing.  First of all, your “sources” could only be harmed by your publication if anyone who wishes to do them harm bothers to read what you write or, if they do read it, they care.  Second, there is an assumption that your sources have less social “power” than those who might wish to harm them.

Wrapping around these assumptions is an almost Manichean perception of “reality” - a worldview where the forces of “Good” (i.e. social scientists) are constantly engaged with the force of “Evil” (i.e. anyone who disagree with “us”).  This worldview probably solidified in the 19th century as a result of the debates surrounding evolution.  Certainly by the time that Boas wrote his 1919 article in The Nation, “science” was seen as “the Good”, as opposed to “politics”.  Consider how it is phrased

They [non-scientists] merely accept the code of morality to which modern society still conforms. Not so the scientist. The very essence of his life is the service of truth. We all know scientists who in private life do not come up to the standard of truthfulness, but who, nevertheless, would not consciously falsify the results of their researches. It is bad enough if we have to put up with these, because they reveal a lack of strength of character that is liable to distort the results of their work. A person, however, who uses science as a cover for political spying, who demeans himself to pose before a foreign government as an investigator and asks for assistance in his alleged researches in order to carry on, under this cloak, his political machinations, prostitutes science in an unpardonable way and forfeits the right to be classed as a scientist.

For Boas, then, the quintessence of “Evil” was not in the following of current morality by non-scientists but, rather, in the purposeful betrayal of Science by scientists.  Boas assumes an almost Catholic position whereby the ultimate Evil is defined as the Obstinate Denial of Truth as revealed by Science.  Indeed, Canon 751 pretty neatly defines the various forms of “Evil” that currently show up

Can. 751 Heresy is the obstinate denial or doubt, after baptism, of a truth which must be believed by divine and catholic faith. Apostasy is the total repudiation of the christian faith. Schism is the withdrawal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or from communion with the members of the Church subject to him.

If we adopted this terminology, then the actions of the HTS would be viewed as “heresy” by some, the act of “spying” would be “apostacy”, and “Cultural Studies” would be a schism…

Alright, a touch tongue in cheek perhaps, but that is what we study - patterns of behaviour.  Canon 751 could easily be rewritten to read

Can. 751 Heresy is the obstinate denial or doubt, after graduation, of a truth which must be believed by Anthropologists. Apostasy is the total repudiation of the Anthropological discipline. Schism is the withdrawal of submission to the discipline of Anthropology or from communion with the members of the Discipline.

Why is lying a “truth which must be believed”?

The structures underlying the doctrine of lying to protect your sources are quite interesting.  Some of these structures come from experiences working with groups that are in a position of relative powerlessness where there was a clear and present danger of the sources being attacked or the work of Anthropologists being used to decrease their personal/group freedom.  Please note, that Boas, along with many 19th century scientists, held that

There are two things to which I am devoted: absolute academic and spiritual freedom, and the subordination of the state to the interests of the individual; expressed in other forms, the furthering of conditions in which the individual can develop to the best of his ability — as far as it is possible with a full understanding of the fetters imposed upon us by tradition; and the fight against all forms of power policy of states or private organizations.

This final point, the “fight against all forms of power policy of states or private organizations”, has achieved doctrinal status within much of Anthropology although not, I suspect, in a manner that Boas would approve.  I say this, because I believe that the “fight” against states and private organizations has assumed doctrinal supremacy over the “furthering of conditions in which the individual can develop to the best of his ability” to such a degree that the doctrine of conflict has subsumed the doctrine of furtherance.  In effect, it is now assumed that the “furthering of conditions in which the individual can develop to the best of his ability” can only be achieved by a “fight against all forms of power policy of states or private organizations”.

If the history of religion (or politics) has taught us anything, it is to be wary of doctrines that valorize conflict above creation.  Inevitably, they “slide” into an ethical stance that privileges ends over the means through the adoption of a via positiva stance.  This stance then tends to produce doctrine (or legislation or “codes of ethics”) that systematically privileges one group - “Us” - over another - “Them” which, inevitably, decrease the “conditions in which the individual can develop to the best of his ability”.  This is one of those “no zeroes, no infinities” paradoxes which I refered to in an earlier post.

Let’s return to the question of why is lying a “truth that must be believed”.  Lying to protect your sources arose in a situation where not lying would clearly endanger them.  Clearly, at the time this arose, it was a “Good Thing” to do (i.e. a “self-evident truth”).  And, I would hold, it is still a “Good Thing” to do if the conditions of a clear and present danger are established in the perceptions of either the Anthropologist or the sources.  But what about when those conditions do not apply?  What about when the perception of a clear and present danger is only held by the Anthropologist and not by the souces? And, most pernicious of all, what about when neither the Anthropologist nor the source perceived any clear and present danger, but the ethics review committee assumes one based on doctrine rather than on reality?

This final situation was the one I had to deal with in my Ph.D. fieldwork where my sources required that I use their real names and the real names of the organizations they worked for as a condition of field access.  The only people who opposed this were several people in my department’s ethics review committee who knew absolutely nothing about the field I was examining, and it took months of effort before these neo-Thomistic pedants would grudgingly agree to giving me a dispensation whereby I was not required to lie in my dissertation.  This was not the first run-in I had had with this type of doctrinal pedantry; I had gone through it in my MA research where a Feminist “scholar” had informed me that no man could even study modern witchcraft. Both of these run-ins with “truth that must be believed”, needless to say, left me wondering about the source structures that supported them, the personal ethics of the people who held these views and the dynamics (and motivations) of converting self-evident truths into psuedo-religious doctrine.

When “science” becomes “religion”

Thos. Kuhn noted that science goes through phases, one of which he calls “normal science”.  Within the practice of “normal science”, perceptions of reality are hardened and the practice of science involves “research” that expands primarily on the depth of understanding as opposed to expanding the borders of understanding.  This is the situation that I, and others (such as Jerome Barkow) see happening inside Anthropology - the Quest for “Truth” has become subservient to the Preservation of “Truth” (a dimension I mentioned in an earlier post).

This “hardening” is, usually, in response to data that shows the increasing irrelevance of the dominant theoretical model or “paradigm” operating within the scientific universe of discourse.  Of course, the same dynamic also operates in almost any large, organized belief structure - the Roman Catholic Church in the 15th-17th centuries, the US Air Force in the current COIN dominated battlefield, the Roman Empire in the 4th century and the NAZI use of air transport on the Eastern Front in 1943-45 are all good examples of the process.  The key social characteristics of this hardening process are the subservience of means to the end of preserving “Truth”, the systematic attempt to exclude all other perceptions of “Truth”, and the vilification and attempted elimination of those who either oppose either the means used or attempt their own, “non-doctrinal” Quests.  In effect, the essence of the original perception of “Truth” becomes subservient to the current form of received “Truth”.

Nowhere is this conflict more apparent than in the area of “relevance”.  In “normal science”, relevance is a matter of doctrine.  For much of the conduct of normal science, this doctrine matches perceptions of reality fairly well but, as Kuhn notes, eventually data starts to show up that cannot be accouned for under curent theoretical formulations.  Eventually, this leads to a group of younger scientists producing a “new” model that explains all of the “new” data, causing a “revolution” and a new paradigm is established.  In efect, the epistemological basis of normal science is the match between doctrine and perception of reality; a situation that, for Kuhn, takes place primarily in the univese of discourse of the scientists involved.

This situation (a restricted universe of discourse) does not and can not apply to the social sciences where the “subjects” of our study are other human beings and the patterns of human organization and interaction.  “Relevance” is not restricted to the scientific universe of discourse but, rather, is inherently political since it involves observations of human organization and interaction.  This situation is made even more complex simply because social science involves humans studying humans - “we” cannot separate ourselves from “them” in the same manner as phsyicists can be “seprarte” from neutrons or neurologists from neurochemisry.

This question of “relevance” goes directly to the heart of the current debates over the Minerva Project, the HTS and PRISP.  A particular collection of social groups, the Intelligence community and the military, have come to a perception that certain areas of Anthropology are relevant to their current operations and sections of the Anthropology community deny the political appropriateness of this relevance.  This denial, and the indignant anger shown in it, is based on doctrinal considerations rather than reality - an indignant rejection that any group, let alone ones that are doctrinally constructed as “demonic”, would have the audacity to question the “Truth” and demand “proof” of it.

Another group of Anthropologists have suported at least an examination of the relevance of Anthropology to military and intelligence operations, and the ensuing witch hunt for the most visible of this group, Montgomery McFate, is a matter of record.  Their position, that Anthropology had been relevant but had increasingly lost its relevance from the late 1960’s onward, is rejected by the doctrinal purists who argue that it is a) still relevant by definition but b) may only be used in a “sacramentally ‘pure’” manner - one in keeping with the doctrine of conflict and suporting the current hagiography and demonography and not by “ritually unclean” groups such as the military or intelligence community.

The issue of “sacramental purity” is actually highlighted by Hugh Gusterson in a recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, where he notes that

Much criticism of the original Minerva proposal focused on the peer-review process and on a likely selection bias in the applicant pool. Regarding the peer-review process, critics were concerned that the Pentagon has little expertise in evaluating academic social science compared to NSF and other similar agencies, and that the selection process might be politicized or amateurish.

“Sacramental purity” is acheived by following “ritual”, i.e. “peer-review”; a process by which ones colleagues decide whether or not a research project is “valid”.  Peer reviews are, by definition, “professional” (as opposed to “amateur”), although the question of whether or not they are politicized is open to debate.  Indeed, as Gusterson note, the “purity ritual” of the NSF may not be enough to wipe out the “demonic stain”:

Speaking for my own discipline, anthropology, many academic anthropologists simply will not apply for military funding. For some, this is a political stance. Others, more pragmatic, fear that research subjects in other countries may refuse to talk to researchers funded by the military. Doubtless there are also some who won’t apply for fear of incurring the opprobrium of politically correct colleagues.

One of the few anti-military Anthropologists who I truly respect as a scholar and as an ethical person, Max Forte, has gone so far as to suggest either a boycott of any research that might be useful to the military or to create “Pentagon-free zones”.  While I disagree with him, he at least has the courage of his convictions and is willing to look at the logical necessities of his stance.

The stance of the anti-military crowd inside Anthropology is troubling to me because of the resonances I see between current positional rhetoric and past ones.  Some of the rhetoric is sounding similar to that of Kramer and Sprenger, other like that of Arnault Amalric, and the best like Boethius.  I get worried when a discipline founded in part on “the furthering of conditions in which the individual can develop to the best of his ability” doctrinally limits its members ability to do so or even examine if it is possible in some areas.  This is not “Science”, this is “Religion” in the worst sense of the term.  Whiole they are not in Obstinate Doubt about a truth that must be believed, many certainly are in Obstinate Denial about the reality of human existence.