Intelligent Design (ID) proponents are sometimes labelled "anti-science." They are in good company.

Many biologists and science historians have been attacked as "anti-science" for challenging scientists' basic assumptions about themselves and their work, whatever the reason for the challenge. The ID controversy, however heated, is not the only controversy or even the first where one side was labelled "anti-science."

Boyle and Hobbes: Caught in the Science Wars

In the seventeenth century, Robert Boyle advocated the experimental method, but Thomas Hobbes believed that laboratory experiments could not replicate results in the real world. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's 1985 book, Leviathan and the Air Pump, examined the disagreement.

From this and other controversies, they concluded that scientists are not more fair-minded than other people. Science is a human construction, and while it has produced great advances for humanity, it is also ridden with rivalries and influenced by social conditions. In short they challenged the basic assumptions of both scientists and the public about what went on behind the laboratory doors.

Shaffer, Shapin and some colleagues propose a new way of doing science that asks questions such as "How did this happen"? rather than "Who should get the credit for doing it first?"

It was a costly suggestion. In November 2007 Simon Shaffer, related on Ideas, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program, that he, Shapin, and the colleagues who shared their views were subjected to verbal tirades, career limitations, and threats of firing for suggesting that science is neither priestly nor merely utilitarian.

Shaffer calls the period between the mid 1980s and mid 1990s the "science wars." The idea that science is a human construct whose results are shaped in part by social conditions and biases was too radical an idea for the science establishment of the mid-1980s. He suggests science is a bit more open to new ideas these days.

But is that correct? Are the science wars over?

Seeing what we expect to see

Scientists do not always react angrily to information that contradicts expected findings. More often, contradictory information is simply ignored. For example, evidence of paternal inheritance of MtDNA in mammals has often been ignored by textbook writers, scientists, and the media. Many sources of public information also report that identical twins have identical DNA, but they don't.

A famous example of ignoring contradictory information is early biologist Ernst Haeckel's drawings of vertebrate embryos. The apparent similarity of the embryos of vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) support the case that all vertebrates have a single ancestor (common ancestry). They have been a staple of textbooks for over a century. But the embryos were in fact altered to look much more similar in the books than they are in life. They never look as similar as Haeckel portrayed them. As noted in The Design of Life,

Furthermore, the stage Haeckel labeled the "first" is actually midway through development. Indeed, stages exhibiting striking differences appear earlier in development, preceding those whose similarities Haeckel exaggerated. Darwin's "strongest single class of facts," therefore, constitutes a classic example of scientific evidence being skewed to fit a theory. (P. 138)

The embryos drawings have been called "fraudulent" and "one of the most famous fakes in biology" (The Design of Life p. 139), by people who strongly supported common ancestry. The most likely reason that the drawings - or carefully selected but misleading photos - have continued to appear in textbooks is the human tendency to ignore information that does not confirm our expectations.

Some normal human biases we all share

Some scientists have tried to measure the way that we ignore information that conflicts with our political and philosophical bias. In one study, American Democrats and Republicans ignored facts that did not support their viewpoints.

Drew Westen, Director of Clinical Psychology at Emory University and his team at Emory University, found that some circuits in the brain lit up when subjects were confronted with conflicting information, some of which did not support their own bias. But the active circuits were not the ones known to be involved in reasoning. Instead the most active circuits in participants' brains helped regulate emotion and resolve conflicts. This allowed participants to reach conclusions that did not take all facts into account.

The way we interpret scientific results and natural laws may also reflect our own desire for order. According to astrophysicist, Mario Livio, author of The Equation that Couldn’t Be Solved (2005, Simon & Schuster Trade), we may see symmetry in nature more often than it is really there simply because seeing symmetry is one of the ways we make sense of our world.  

Biases based on our philosophy of life

Sometimes, when confronted by evidence that contradicts our positions, we may simply make a decision to ignore it.

Harvard evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin outlines the philosophy of materialism in science as follows:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. (From "Billions and Billions of Demons")

In other words, many theories are accepted not because they produce valuable new understandings but because they support materialism. This should not be surprising. As a human construct, science is part of the culture in which it is created. And the dominant sub-culture of science has been materialist and Darwinist for the better part of a century.

The Challenge for Darwinism and ID

It takes exceptional courage and insight to honestly examine evidence that conflicts with our own world view. The result can be valuable new insights but also hostility from people who have avoided confronting the evidence. Evidence of design in nature, for example, may be too radical for many Darwinists in the foreseeable future.

Intelligent design proponents can fall into the same trap, of course - seeing design where law or chance can explain specific events. Looking at contradictory evidence with an unbiased and clear eye may be the surest way to gain credibility for their position. And the surest way to fruitful research.

So the answer to our title question is no, science cannot be unbiased, but scientists can try not to let biases interfere with research.