We often hear that science is "just politics" or that studies are biased by the personal beliefs of scientists. But this widespread idea misses the very point of what science is.
While science is a human endeavor, its core engine is a systematic process designed to root out bias and converge on reality, regardless of our feelings.
At its heart, science isn't a collection of facts carved in stone. It's a dynamic, self-correcting process for building and organizing knowledge through testable explanations and predictions. Its power doesn't come from the infallibility of individual scientists, but from the rigorous system they operate within.
Science deals with observations and measurements of the real world. If you can't observe it, measure it, or test it, it falls outside the realm of science.
Before a finding is accepted, it's subjected to intense scrutiny by other experts in the field. They check the methodology, analyze the data, and try to replicate the results.
A good scientific idea isn't one that can be proven true forever; it's one that can, in principle, be proven false.
The gold standard for any scientific discovery is for independent researchers to repeat the experiment and get the same results.
This process means that while individual studies can be flawed and scientists can be biased, the collective enterprise of science has a built-in immune system. Over time, it corrects its own errors. This is why we no longer believe in the phlogiston theory of fire or that diseases are caused by "bad air." The evidence didn't support them.
Sometimes, the most powerful scientific findings are the ones that go against our deepest hopes about human nature. Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiments in the 1960s are a perfect example of how a well-designed study can reveal an uncomfortable truth that is, nonetheless, objectively true.
The Objective: To understand how ordinary people could be compelled to perform acts contrary to their personal conscience, a question fueled by the trials of Nazi war criminals.
Milgram designed a deceptively simple experiment:
Participants were told they were taking part in a study on memory and learning.
A "Teacher" (the real, unknowing participant) and a "Learner" (an actor) were assigned. The experimenter (an authority figure in a lab coat) oversaw the process.
The Teacher was given a sample 45-volt electric shock to feel its potency. The Learner was then strapped into a chair in an adjacent room, visible through a window.
The Teacher was to test the Learner on word pairs. For every wrong answer, the Teacher was instructed to administer an electric shock, increasing the voltage by 15 volts for each subsequent error.
The actor/Learner did not actually receive shocks but pre-recorded a script of protests: banging on the wall at 300 volts, screaming in pain, and eventually falling silent after 330 volts.
If the Teacher wanted to stop, the experimenter prodded them with a series of standardized verbal prompts, like "Please continue" and "The experiment requires that you continue." The study measured how far an ordinary person would go in obeying an authority figure, even when it conflicted with their moral beliefs.
The results were shocking, both then and now. Before the experiment, Milgram polled psychiatrists who predicted less than 1% of participants would administer the highest voltage.
| Participant Behavior | Result |
|---|---|
| Administered shocks up to 300 volts | 100% of participants |
| Administered the final, 450-volt shock | 65% of participants |
| Obeyed despite the Learner's screams and protests | The majority of participants |
| Defied the authority figure and stopped early | A minority of 35% |
The scientific importance of Milgram's work is immense. It wasn't about proving that people are "evil." It provided robust, empirical evidence for a powerful psychological principle: under certain conditions of authority, ordinary individuals can commit acts they would normally find abhorrent. This finding has held up across many replications and cultures, making it a reliable, if unsettling, fact about human social behavior. It's a truth revealed by the scientific process, not a political opinion about human nature.
Experiments like Milgram's rely on carefully designed tools and protocols to ensure the results are about the phenomenon being studied, not random chance. Here are some of the key "reagents" in a behavioral scientist's toolkit.
| Tool / Reagent | Function in the Experiment |
|---|---|
| Standardized Protocol | A strict, step-by-step script for the experimenter to follow. This ensures every participant has the same experience, eliminating variation caused by the experimenter's mood or behavior. |
| Confederate | An actor who plays a specific role (like the "Learner") to standardize the social stimulus presented to the real participant. |
| Deception | Withholding the true purpose of the study to prevent participants from altering their behavior (reactivity). Ethical standards now require thorough debriefing afterward. |
| Quantitative Measures | Using numerical data (e.g., the maximum shock level administered) instead of subjective interpretations. This allows for statistical analysis and objective comparison. |
| Control Conditions | Running variations of the experiment to isolate variables (e.g., changing the proximity of the "Learner" or the authority of the experimenter) to see what specifically drives the effect. |
To claim that science is inherently political is to confuse the process with the people involved. Scientists, like all humans, have personal beliefs, biases, and funding pressures that can influence the questions they ask and how they interpret initial results. This is the human context of science, and it is real.
Scientists have personal beliefs, biases, and funding pressures that can influence their work.
Evidence, replication, and peer review form a system designed to eliminate bias over time.
But the scientific process—with its demand for evidence, replication, and peer review—is a machine designed to grind those biases into dust over time. It is a method that forces our subjective opinions to bow to objective reality. The political battles are often over the application of science or the funding for certain research, but the underlying facts uncovered by a robust process are apolitical. Gravity works the same for everyone, a virus doesn't care about your ideology, and the data from a well-run experiment points to a single, verifiable conclusion. The truth is out there, not by decree, but by design.