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Scientific Professions that Prioritize Ideology Above the Scientific Method are Unethical


Falsifiability, as defined by the philosopher Karl Popper, defines the inherent testability of any scientific hypothesis. 

All scientific models must be testable and falsifiable. In other words even the best and most elegant scientific models must be subject to being proven wrong by experimental or observational data. –  What is Science?

Isn’t an ideology, at least in part, a hypothesis? That is, doesn’t an ideology consist of at least the following two things: 1) a set of assumptions about the way the world works, i.e., about what IS, and 2) based on those assumptions, a set of assertions about the way it should work, i.e., about what OUGHT to be?

Isn’t the first of those a hypothesis?

For example, aren’t Jon Haidt’s two stories about capitalism, summarized here  and here  two hypotheses consisting of a set of assertions and assumptions that are falsifiable?  Doesn’t his “third story” essentially identify which of those assertions and assumptions are false, and which are true?

In The Institutionalization of Ideology in Sociology Carl Bankston describes how the scientific discipline of sociology is being overtaken by ideology.

Doesn’t science have a code of ethics, or a set of professional principles similar to the Hippocratic Oath of medicine, or the Code of Ethics of the National Education Association?

Insofar as a scientific profession violates any of those codes, is it not unethical? Isn’t the imposition of an ideology, any ideology, other than the scientific method, on any science, sociology included, not merely unethical, but antithetical to the concept of science itself?

If any sociology is a science, and if sociologists follow the scientific process, and if that process is used to test the hypothesis and/or the essential core assumptions of social justice, or for that matter any other ideology, then wouldn’t sociology in the final analysis purge itself of any that turn out to be false?

If not, then the problem is much bigger than merely the imposition of an ideology onto a profession; its the loss of science, and the scientific process, itself.

 

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