Journal or Publishing Institution: Environmental Values
Study: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30302334
Author(s): Spash, C.L.
Article Type: Journal Publication
Record ID: 2191
Text: Hume’s fact-value dichotomy is something which appeared useful during the enlightenment but which today has become part of a dangerous rhetoric being used by some for the control and manipulation of information. Others seem unaware of the implications when they draw on this divide to describe the natural sciences as separated from political process, and subject to different standards of conduct from the social and policy sciences. This line of reasoning can quickly slip into classifying the social sciences as mere means of communicating what the ‘real scientists’ have discovered. Science- policy failures are then interpreted as matters of poor communication of ‘the truth’ to an ignorant public in need of education. Simultaneously the natural sciences are then promoted over other knowledge and laid susceptible to manipulation through lack of an explicit account of the political processes within which they are embedded…
Keywords: Social sciences, natural sciences, research funding, alternative energy
Citation: Spash, C.L., 2010. Censoring science in research officially. Environmental Values, 19(2), pp.141-146.
