Topic > The importance of neutrality in science - 1371

Evolution News states in a post entitled “The myth of the neutrality of science” that “the scientific method is not a machine that guarantees: “Data in; knowledge out” . Science is always mediated by fallible human beings, with imperfect knowledge, inclined to selfish interests.” “Bad science,” however, as we learned on the TOK course, is science that, when explored, is based on biases and agenda-driven goals, some natural sciences such as pathological science and junk science are considered "bad" solely on the basis of their lack of neutrality. This contradicts the concept raised earlier that it may be possible that some scientific research lacking neutrality is not unreliable or bad. In order for a science to be considered legitimate we can consider Karl Popper's theory of falsifiability, which outlines neutrality as the product of a falsifiable process. Karl Popper's theory of falsifiability, in short, states that a theory cannot be considered valid without the possibility of being disproved, so when considering neutrality in this equation it makes sense that it would be the result of such a neutral and open-ended result