Judging the Secular Shamans

David Oderberg is a friend of mine from the UK and is a philosophy professor at Reading University. In this splendid column published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Oderberg takes on the worrisome trend in which many in society treat scientists as if they were priests. One cause of this phenomenon, as I have written, is that for some, science is morphing into scientism. In other words, science is seen as an ends rather than a means, a belief system rather than a technique for obtaining knowledge. Some people who have rejected religion (and some who haven’t)look now to science for Truth (with a capital T), which science is incapable of providing.

Referring to the fraud that has recently come to light, Oderberg writes, “It’s all very well having secular shamans, but when they’re caught cooking the holy books once too often, the faithful start to get worried.”

Oderberg also calls for a “separation from science and state.”

“It may be inviting poison e-mails to say it, but I venture to suggest that contemporary science is now so corrupted by the lust for loot and glory that nothing less than root-and-branch reform can save it. For a start, although I distance myself wholly from his anti-rationalism and methodological anarchy, I share the late philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend’s demand for a separation of science and state, or at the very least a radical curtailment of public financial sponsorship of scientific research. How could the millions thrown at scientists be anything other than a veritable inducement to misconduct? When you combine it with the innumerable honors and awards that await the next would-be secular savior of humanity, one wonders that fraud is not even more common than it appears to be.”

I don’t necessarily agree with removing public funding from science. (I do think that when public funding leads to remunerative patents and products, the public should receive some sort of return for their investment.) But, Oderberg is onto something important. Look around at the embryonic stem cell field. Can there be any doubting that the funding issue has sparked an hysteria among the science community and chamber of commerce type advocates?

He closes with a well-deserved slam against the California Center for Regenerative Medicine, the campaign for which (Proposition 71) had its own problems with integrity:

“It would be an act of utter folly and of contempt for honesty and integrity were Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s beloved California Institute for Regenerative Medicine now to go ahead. Were a bishop to be caught doctoring the Gospels, I doubt any scientists would be rushing to approve the Church’s latest request for help to build a new cathedral. Why it should be any different for the secular bishops of science is difficult to discern.”

Check Oderberg out. His opinion is well worth pondering.