Scientists are not like other people — which is good, because nobody wants a historian designing fluid-dynamics computer simulations.
And in large part, nobody wants a scientist critically evaluating the reign of Mad King George as a function of having 15 children.
As much of a pain as it is for scientists and normal people to talk to and understand each other, though, obviously we need to communicate. Moreover, the definite differences between how scientists and “nons” think are artificial, and we could all benefit from sharing our perspectives.
In fact, the scientific method would be useful in some of the policy decisions that have to be made at the University. This can be seen in the über-hype of Nike CEO Phil Knight’s response to the University’s joining the Worker Rights Consortium.
The scientific method is supposed to be a dynamic system for evaluating any testable hypothesis. Though any system can be manipulated — and the scientific method is no exception — the validity of the method is still true, and it can be as useful to other people as it is to scientists.
Among Knight’s opinions about the issue, apparently he and Nike would rather have their factories monitored by the Fair Labor Association than by the WRC. Not that he would necessarily change his multimillionaire mind if we joined both groups, but would it be all that bad if we did?
I have read as many arguments against the FLA as you have. Some are ridiculous; some are logical. But none are tested. I bet many scientists would argue for joining the FLA if for no other reason than for the sake of experimentation. Sure, in science we like things to make sense based on what we already know. But that’s not to say that nothing interesting happens.
For example, every year, the scientific community awaits the awarding of the Nobel Prizes to the Michael Jordans of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay world. Do these go to people who experiment for years using established principles and facts? Not exactly. Conventional wisdom in science is that Nobel Prizes are awarded to people who discover phenomena that do not make sense. Usually, they are persecuted for these heretical ideas, and then they prove that they’ve been right the whole time.
The FLA is such a phenomenon. Opponents of it offer many valid reasons for why we should not support corporate members on our monitoring organization’s board. Naturally, “internal monitoring” is something that Nike already has and will always have control over; the fact that it is not always congruent with our perception of workers’ rights is entirely the problem.
For a moment, let’s think about what’s important. Is the flavor of the board so critical, or do we simply care that foreign workers are not taken advantage of?
The 1997 Nobel Laureate in Medicine was mocked for years because he tried to prove that certain communicable diseases are not caused by any life form. Eventually he was vindicated, and we now believe that things such as mad-cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases are in fact caused by infectious, non-living, biologically produced, mutant proteins. It was counterintuitive for everyone at first. But clearly, it wasn’t wrong.
Counterintuitive or not, will it hurt to try the FLA too? Must we be so cynical to say that just because industry board members are involved, workers everywhere will be worse off for generations?
Nothing is totally wrong unless you prove it. And you can’t prove anything without an experiment or two. If we join the FLA, the worst that will happen is that it won’t do as good of a job as the WRC. But what if it’s better?
We’ll never know until we try.