It's Okay for Scientists to Have Biases

...why does it matter what biases and emotional predispositions scientists bring to their studies, so long as they are scrupulously honest and other people with different proclivities check their results? Presumably no one would argue that the conservative view on the sum of fourteen and twenty-seven differs from the liberal view, or that the mathematical function that is its own derivative is the exponential in the northern hemisphere but some other function in the southern. Any regular periodic function can be represented to arbitrary accuracy by a Fourier series in Muslim as well as in Hindu mathematics. Non-commutative algebras (where A times B does not equal B times A) are as self-consistent and meaningful for speakers of Indo-European languages as for speakers of Finno-Ugric. Mathematics might be prized or ignored, but it is equally true everywhere - independent of ethnicity, culture, language, religion, ideology.

Notes:

Because facts are the same despite our leanings.

Folksonomies: objectivity bias

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The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Sagan , Carl and Druyan , Ann (1997-02-25), The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Ballantine Books, Retrieved on 2011-05-04

Folksonomies: science empiricism rationalism