Report R3.1 Science & Pseudoscience: The Problem of Demarcation Seminar Leader: D. P. Dash, XIMB dpdash[at]ximb.ac.in This was the opening research training seminar for the academic year 2005-2006. In this seminar, we sought to characterise research and discuss its demarcation from other types of activity. During the discussion, various notions related to research were explored, namely history of science, transferable knowledge, adequacy, acceptability, verifiability, falsifiability, methodological core, paradigm shift, narratives, conventions, etc. By the end of the seminar, there were more questions than answers. More importantly, there was also recognition that research is an evolving practice--the choices we make today can influence its course in the future. There was also the realisation that knowledge is constituted and expressed in narrative conventions, which can be designed as per the requirements of a particular field or discipline. The discussions started with the seminar leader making a brief opening remark about the long tradition of thinking on the nature of knowledge, research, and science. Historically speaking, epochal periods can be identified that witnessed significant changes in the human quest for knowledge, giving birth to new avenues of inquiry as well as corresponding institutional orders that sustained those avenues of inquiry. One such avenue of inquiry is modern science that achieved its distinctive expression in the seventeenth century. The rising prestige of science as an avenue of inquiry drew people and resources into its fold and it grew as a collective enterprise, despite resistance from different quarters--for examples, the powerful social authorities. Simultaneously, it also led to questionable developments such as the emergence of what were viewed as fake sciences, introduction of ideological control over scientific work, etc. It triggered some thinkers to pose the "problem of demarcation," i.e., a search for the defining characteristics of science. In the twentieth century, this search has been led by writers such as Bertrand Russell, Rudolph Carnap, Carl Hempel, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, etc. In order to delve into the issues of demarcation, we started with the question: What is research? Each time this question is posed in these seminars, it directs us towards a multitude of issues relevant to improving research quality. This time too, it led to an interesting variety of answers and new questions. No unique answer could be arrived at. It appeared, different types of activity carried out in different contexts have been labelled as research, e.g., scientific research, applied research, creative research, etc. It was not clear, what would make these distinguishable as research--the actions of researchers (or scientists), their approach and method, their motivation, their commitments, or their results? Many of these could also be part of everyday life. The quest for that which makes research a distinctive enterprise seemed to be rather open-ended--subject to further analysis and review. In this discussion, different categories of research were mentioned: (i) observational, (ii) descriptive, (iii) explanatory, (iv) evaluative, etc. Some notions of quality (e.g., "observational adequacy," "explanatory adequacy," etc.) were said to be associated with these. It appeared, different types of convention have evolved in different domains of research, along with certain criteria to assess the quality and acceptability of the results. Such criteria appear to be relative to the context in which these are developed and the purpose for which these are used. Therefore, our search for the distinctiveness of research can be widened to examine various other issues. Attention was then diverted to another set of issues, by asking the question: What is knowledge? Again a range of meanings entered into the discussion. Knowledge was spoken of in terms of "organised information," "accepted belief," "perceived reality," etc. At this point, a distinction was introduced between knowledge as expressed in the scriptures and knowledge as expressed by individuals, referring to the historical development of science, art, and literature through the Renaissance in Europe (fourteenth to sixteenth century). Of course, other types of distinction referring to other historical contexts would also be possible, e.g., knowledge pertaining to an eternal order (i.e., sacred knowledge) versus the knowledge attached to everyday life (i.e., profane knowledge). Such distinctions point to the historically changing criteria of acceptance, whereby different forms of knowledge emerge by contesting the established notions of "acceptability" and initiating alternative ones. The discussions moved on to focus on the issues concerning scientific knowledge, i.e., the type of knowledge that would have sufficient inherent strength and would not depend on the approval from any powerful social authority--sacred or otherwise. Interesting threads on this can be found in the philosophical literature that examines the remarkable success of science as an avenue of inquiry (or as a process of knowing). Glimpses of different aspects of this literature constituted much of what was discussed in the seminar. This included the earlier criterion of "conclusive verifiability" and the later criterion of "falsifiability" as competing notions to help demarcate scientific statements from other types of statement. Despite the logical lucidity of the criterion of "falsifiability," subsequent considerations in the literature have pointed out two types of difficulty: (i) since no theory is ever put to test all by itself, but only in conjunction with various assumptions, conditions, instruments, etc., even if a disconfirming instance were found, it would not necessarily falsify the theory (because the assumptions could be wrong or the instruments could be defective!); and (ii) actual scientists (or researchers) do not appear to easily give up their theories against disconfirming evidence--they might treat such evidence as "anomaly" (as pointed out by Kuhn) or just alter an "auxiliary hypothesis" but leave the "methodological core" in tact (as pointed out by Lakatos). There was some discussion on the insights of Kuhn and Lakatos on the problem of demarcation. The notions of "paradigm shift" (Kuhn) and "progressive research programme" (Lakatos) were mentioned, although not discussed in detail. Upon this backdrop, the topic of contemporary research in applied disciplines, such as management, was then taken up in the seminar. One important element of this context of research is the presence of specific "users." This requires that the results of research should not lose their quality when transferred to a new "context of use." This seems to bring to the fore another facet of the problem of demarcation, i.e., the "transferability" of research results. Accordingly, research results are expected to be transferable to contexts other than where they were first developed. This does relate to the notion of "generalisability." It requires that results should be transferable without loss of quality. This turns out to be a complex requirement, involving issues of "research design." De Zeeuw's (1995) work on this subject indicates that there may not be any unique solution to the problem of demarcation, considering the never-ending extensions to the topics and issues that enter into the sphere of research practice. He has set out "four puzzles" of demarcation, whose resolution can yield particular demarcations (i.e., particular images of science or research) depending upon the type of resolution adopted. The four puzzles are with respect to the following: (i) what inputs would enter into the research process, (ii) how these inputs would be synthesised, (iii) what type of logical distinction would separate the inputs from the results of the synthesis, and (iv) how transferable results would be constituted from the synthesis. The process of scientific development indicates that it creates opportunities for people (i.e., those who participate in it) to drop out from the process, by either "believing" in some of its results or "not believing," i.e., not trusting, some of its results. This was articulated in "A Story of Astronomy," read out from Dash (2002). It suggested that pursuing research requires the "spirit of inquiry" and also the will to reorganise the process of inquiry from time to time, as the existing processes lead us to blind alleys of one kind or another. While undertaking such reorganisation, one requirement would be to take into account the issue of demarcation. This requires formulations such as De Zeeuw's, which can guide the process of developing alternative reorganisations of research. A proposal towards one such reorganisation of research was presented by the seminar leader (Dash, 2002). It consisted of the following characterisation of the research process: (i) some participants are able to participate in a narrative (ii) they can recognise when a transferable result is achieved (iii) the result can be transferred to some specified public (iv) the narrative is capable of tracking how the transferred result fares This indicated a notion of research wherein the researchers are aware of the context of use and remain accountable for the consequences of transferring research results. This necessitates extensions to classical scientific research, which might be a topic for our future seminars. References Dash, D. P. (2002). Improvement of co-ordination: Rescripting research for multi-agent environments. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 19(2), 115-121. Science and pseudoscience [Transcript]. (n.d.). Retrieved 24 Jun 2005, from http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/lakatos/scienceAndPseudoscienceTranscript.htm Zeeuw, G. de. (1995). Values, science, and the quest for demarcation. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 12(1), 15-25.
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