I’ve got a few minutes as my brain “de-fuzzes” (okay, maybe not the best time to respond .

I’ve read some of Latour’s work and, on the whole, tend to think it has a lot of corrective value. I certainly wouldn’t call it Post-Modernist (I tend to reserve that term for extremist Foucauldian and other navel-gazing experiments that deconstruct to the point of meaninglessness).

Let me try and clarify what I mean by “striving” or “holding as an ideal”. Basically, I use the terms as a goal to which “we” [scientists - and, yes, I call myself that] *should* aim for, always knowing that we will fail. I tend to draw some pretty heavy distinctions between “operational truths” (aka “that which seems to work”) and “ultimate truths” (which I believe are unknowable in the fullest sense).

I would draw a distinction between my position and that of the Positivists. The Positivists, I would argue, from Comte onwards have tended to focus on operational truths *as if* they were “absolute truths”; what I consider to be a categorical error. I try and focus on what I am able to perceive of “absolute truths”, always knowing that my perceptions are limited and flawed. A subtle but, I would content, important distinction.

And, as a side note, let me just say that in my personal hagiography, Oliver Cromwell rates a LOT higher than Descarte (who I place in Dante’s Ninth Ring of Hell). Descartes played Procrustes, while one of Cromwell’s most famous saying was “Brethren, I beseach ye in the Bowels of Christ to consider that ye may be mistaken” – a motto all scientists should, IMHO, have on their walls.

I’m swotting under a deadline, so I’ll have to get back to your great comment tomorrow…

Marc

I’ve read the manual and didn’t get that impression at all. As far as specificity of ethical requirements is concerned, I would suggest that you actually read Title 32, CFR, Part 219 – Protection of Human Subjects and, for other light reading, check out the SECNAV Instruction 3900.39D (available at http://www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/34/docs/secnavinst_3900_39d.pdf) and the Belmont Report (available at http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/guidelines/belmont.html) which is the basis of all USG ethical requirements. I’m not off base on this.

Glad you took the time to respond. I have slightly less beef with your argument’s current form.

One problem, which is probably my bad, is my somewhat cavalier use of “epistemology”. You rightly identity a standard explanation of epistemology, and meta-epistemology. If we can get even more ‘meta’ for a moment, however, we can suggest that your explanation of epistemology falls within a more or less (philosophically) modern epistemological view that, going back as far as Descartes if one likes, is characterized by dualities: mind/body, nature/society, and other such extensions of the basic subject/object split. In particular, you’re describing a variant of what is at its base epistemological positivism. Now when doing science, a positivist epistemology is almost necessary (if someone has worked Feyerabend’s “anarchy” into a constructive lab setting, I’d be interested to hear about it!) Even if this Procrustean ordering of chaos is an epistemological illusion, it’s an illusion that often works, and we can enjoy scientific progress.

Now the problem comes in when this way of thinking about science breaks down. The line dividing the social and the scientific blurs, and not just at the moral level, which would simply involve the two separate entities to engage each other. One of the best and first studies of this is Latour and Woolgar’s ‘Laboratory Life’ where they visit a biochem laboratory as ethnographers. There, and in other places, they come to the conclusion that scientific facts are the products of many things: social relations, beliefs, technology, essays, etc. They went in with the intention of proving that scientific facts are “socially constructed”, but eventually came to realize that this was oversimple. They came to argue, Latour in particular, that “nature” and “society” are products, and not causes, of scientific activity. I would hesitate to call this “postmodernity”, as Latour certainly does not, but as a label it’s more or less applicable.

I’m not doing Latour’s argument much justice, but my point is that society influences science (and vice versa) in fundamental ways, not just in adjacent ethical ways that are easily identifiable, but in ways that are involved in determining “the facts”. I brought up the Tuskegee experiments because it’s a perfect example: would this “pure science” have been carried out if the test subjects were white? The internal values of those scientists informed how they separated “social values” from “scientific ones”, and though the circumstances are different today, the same process occurs: one’s sense of scientific objectivity is informed by factors that are themselves nonobjective. For my part, I agree that, for the nuts and bolts of actual scientific work, striving toward separating society and science is expedient. When it comes to political discussions, it starts to lose its legs.

Your point on analyzing HTS for cost effectiveness, efficiency etc. is well taken. All kinds of “objectivities” (plural) can be assigned to evaluate it, and this should probably be done, as it seems it might not fare too well. Moreover, ethical considerations, as suggested, should be strongly considered. I like the idea of a Canadian Royal Commission style approach (love the CanCon!), but, you know, with, maybe, implementing some of the recommendations.

One note on DoD “ethics”: In my experience doctrine is carefully worded to be ambiguous enough that, while having a reassuring appearance, actually provides little in the way of oversight.