Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Scientific Debate, Proof, and Conjecture:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_07_23-2006_07_29.shtml#1153940676
Some commenters to [1]my earlier post reason:
It [presumably discussion of possible innate gender differences in
cognition] shouldn't be suppressed for political reasons. I think
that a scientific issue, though, shouldn't be taught if there's not
good scientific evidence for it. And I haven't seen good scientific
evidence for this theory
I think the words "without proof" are implied from the second
paragraph.
I.E. "when faculty tell their students that they are innately
inferior, without proof, based on race, religion, gender or sexual
orientation, they are crossing a line that should not be crossed"
I can see that as being fair.
Yet not every step in the scientific process can (or should) contain
"proof" in any strong sense of the word. Scientific debates often
present conjectures based on ambiguous evidence. The conjectures lead
to responses, often equally conjectural. Evidence on one side or the
other grows or shrinks. We often get something approaching "proof"
only after decades of unproven conjectures have led to more
evidence-gathering and more discussion.
This is especially so in areas (including biology and social science)
where the evidence tends to be suggestive, not dispositive, and
confounding factors are always potentially present. Even in math,
though, where "proof" is indeed the touchstone, unproven conjectures
are often made. If you couldn't say anything without "proof," whether
logical proof, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, or even proof by a
preponderance of the evidence as determined by some campus committee,
scientific debate would be much curtailed.
I agree with Frank that professors who are teaching classes shouldn't
teach as true statements that haven't been adequately proven. But
Summers wasn't teaching a class, nor did he assert his claims as
having been proven true. If professors can't express such conjectures
-- yet presumably their rivals would be quite free to present contrary
conjectures, unless we're to completely eliminate public conjecture in
science -- then what sort of debate would we have?
Now perhaps conjectures that are entirely unbacked by any evidence, or
backed by asserted evidence or reasoning that has been conclusively
disproven through decades of open debate, are sufficiently implausible
that we'd fault people who make them. But there is indeed a hot debate
on the subject, involving some pretty serious people on both sides.
There is evidence that some say points towards biological differences,
and that others think is not probative enough (since it's so hard to
isolate biological causes from social causes). There is the
unquestioned reality that men and women are materially different
chromosomally, hormonally, and physically, and that male and female
animals of other species (where the explanation must presumably be
biology and not "culture" divorced from biology) are often different
in temperament and behavior. This at least suggests that looking for
possible biological cognitive and temperamental differences and
differences in distribution of various traits, alongside the
chromosomal, hormonal, and physical differences, is not obviously a
fool's errand -- and thus is plausible fodder for conjecture and
discussion of suggestive evidence, even in the absence of conclusive
proof.
We have, as best I can tell from my layman's perspective, a serious
and potentially intellectually exciting debate here. Shutting off one
side, imposing on one side requirements of "proof" that bar the
proposal of scientific conjectures, or for that matter imposing on
both sides such requirements, strikes me as bad both for our knowledge
of this subject and for scientific debate more generally.
References
1. http://volokh.com/posts/1153936816.shtml
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