Value-free science

What was the origin of the armament unsheathed in Donora and Sacramento Under what conditions and for what purposes was it forged Was it employed as its creators intended, or did it escape their control like the broom conjured by the sorcerer s apprentice These are vital questions for understanding today s environmental dilemmas—and beyond that, they evoke some of the most fundamental problems in social thought. How does economic power influence government What is the basis of scientific authority Is science value-free, or is it shaped by social and economic conditions For more than a century, thinkers and scholars have debated such questions. 

But science is neither value free nor independent. Values do and should enter into important phases of the research process such as problem identification, design of methods and experiments, model assumptions and the use of normative concepts (Alroe and Kristensen 2002). Some concepts that are widely used in agricultural research are clearly value laden. Obvious examples include sustainability, food quality, soil quality, nature quality, animal welfare, rural development and human wellbeing. Such concepts often have different meanings in different groups, discourses and research disciplines. These conceptual differences influence the kinds of... 

Since 1 originally introduced this definition of states of consciousness as part of my attempts to legitimize the study of altered states within the scientific community, this value-free approach was necessary. Many scientists believe science should not deal with values, aa this will distort objectivity. This is true in many instances, but becomes a dangerous half truth when it is interpreted to mean we should never deal with emotions or values in any way. 

A totally value-free orientation, especially when it is based on fear and poor understanding of the functioning of the emotional brain, will not work if we want a comprehensive science of life. It certainly is not desirable for us here, given the practical orientation in this book. Our... 

Proctor, R.N. 1991. Value-Free Science. Cambridge Harvard University Press. 

QIIESTIOINI What do you think of value-free science Does the scientist have an ethical responsibility to the knowledge he or she creates Why or why not ... 

Read the What If... Value-Free Science box. Do you think scientists should have the freedom to pursue scientific knowledge regardless of its potential applications Why or why not ... 

One sign of the influence of these core ideas is that they have profoundly influenced the shape of the modem social sciences, thanks especially to the work of Max Weber. Now, understandably eager to enjoy the power and prestige of the natural sciences, modem social sciences have sought to imitate them. One visible sign of this is the widespread use of modem mathematics in the study of society the flip side of this is the effort to exclude values from the subject matter. The modem social sciences are to be value free to the extent possible and to avoid the value laden questions that would keep them from claiming to be sciences properly understood. But perhaps the most eye- and ear-catching thinker to stress the resistance of values to philosophic justifications was Friedrich Nietzsche, who went so far as to say our preference for truth over falsehood is itself merely a value. As he put it, It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than mere appearance it is even the worst proved assumption there is in the world. ... 

The ACS played an active role in public outreach. For example, in January 1961, the ACS News Service released the first program in its Men and Molecules series, a 15-minute science documentary produced weekly and distributed free to radio stations. The series featured noted scientists discussing their research in terms that the public could understand. Its main goal was to increase the public s understanding of the value of research. By the end of 1975, 785 programs had been completed and broadcast by 525 radio stations in all states (Skolnik Reese, 1976). 

For the most part, the standard potentials shown in Table 1 have converged on values for which there is little uncertainty. With the exception of the francium couple, the first column of standard potentials is calculated from standard free energies of formation provided by the National Institute of Science and Technology... 

The developments through which governments want to arrive at internationally accepted food standards should be a careful balancing of criteria and include consumer interests. Safety assessments as such, without looking at other consumer interests, is a far too narrow approach. At the moment, safety is used as the only criterion to assess products. Even in the few cases in which other criteria have been added, safety has been looked upon as the most relevant. For consumer organizations, this approach is no longer sufficient. Safety assessments are based on scientific evidence, which clearly has its limitations. Science is not free of values and expert statements address values as well as facts. Experts can change... 

Here e represents the relative values of permittivity with respect to that of free space. The term permittivity is not in common usage in the United States in the field of food science. Instead, the term dielectric constant is used. Thus, in Equation 1, e is called the complex dielectric constant, e, the dielectric constant and e", the dielectric loss factor. 

For thermodynamic calculation of equilibria useful in petroleum science, combustion data of extreme accuracy are required because the heats of formation of water and carbon dioxide are large in comparison with those in the hydrocarbons. Great accuracy is also required of the specific heat data for the calculation of free energy or entropy. Much care must be exercised in selecting values from the literature for these purposes, since many of those available were determined before the development of modem calorimetric techniques. 

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