Controversy and the problems of parapsychology

Journal of Parapsychology, The, March, 2002 by Nancy L. Zingrone

To put it a little less ponderously, controversy flows from a "truth" that encapsulates the ease with which both prosecuting attorneys and defense attorneys can always find a crucial and credible scientific expert to testify on behalf of their own case and against the crucial and credible scientific expert hired by their opponents. The truth is this: "For every PhD there exists an equal and opposite PhD." Robert Procter (1995) borrowed this truth, called Gibson's Law, from public relations research to characterize his observation of the antics of dueling scientific experts in cancer research. The anthropologist of science David Hess (1997) then used Gibson's Law as a rhetorical tool to characterize the impact that motivated interests have on scientific practice (pp. 93-94), a topic that has long been dear to the hearts of science analysts (e.g., Barnes, 1977; Gieryn, 1983; Pickering, 1982).

The observation that underlies this truth is not trivial, however. It embodies the widely varying opinion and practice that can result even when disputants in a controversy share similar education, similar research experience, and even similar disciplinary identity. But if Gibson's Law is the heart of controversy, and controversy is at the heart of the scientific enterprise, how can the chaos of argument be structured to produce progress?

SCIENTIFIC NORMS AND ANTINORMS

As in all social groups, science has developed norms. First described in the 1940s by the sociologist of science Robert K. Merton (1973), scientific norms are essentially social norms but they are also moral norms. The Mertonian norms of science are communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism.

Gieryn (1995) described Merton's norms in this way:

Communism asks scientists to share their findings, and the institution promises "returns" only on "property" that is given away. Universalism enjoins scientists to evaluate knowledge claims using "pre-established impersonal criteria" (say, prevailing theoretical or methodological assumptions), so that the allocation of rewards and resources should not be affected by the contributor's race, gender, nationality, social class, or other functionally irrelevant causes. The norm of disinterestedness does not demand altruistic motivations of scientists, but channels their presumably diverse motivations away from merely self-interested behavior that would conflict with the institutional goal of science (which is the extension of... certified knowledge). Organized skepticism proscribes dogmatic acceptance of claims and instead urges suspension of judgment until sufficient evidence and argument are available." (p. 398)

As Hess (1997, pp. 56-58) and others (e.g., Gieryn, 1995; Mulkay, 1975) have noted, the reality of the situation is that these norms are used as ideals to which science aspires and should not be construed as synonymous with the norms our community understands. That is, Merton's four scientific norms do not describe the behavior of scientists in the way that a psychological norm might be thought to describe the prevalence of a specific personality trait in the population. Rather they prescribe. They exist as ideals, as important touchstones against which scientific behavior can be measured, especially in the context of controversy.