Last week Kevin Vranes wrote an interesting post about “skeptics”. One of the things he brought out is that, depending on the context, “skeptic” can be an approving label (here’s someone who won’t be fooled by flim-flam) or a term of abuse (there’s someone who stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the facts of the matter). As well, Kevin notes that, especially when scientists are dealing with folks from outside the scientific community (e.g., journalists or politicians), terms like “skeptics” and “the mainstream” can be used to designate something like tribal memberships: here are the people that are worth listening to, and there are the people whose opinions can be dismissed.
I think the issue of labels is an important one, not only in scientist-lay person interactions, but also in scientist-on-scientist contexts. While I agree with Kevin that some labeling sets us on the path to intellectual laziness, there are instances where labels can actually be useful. The trick, as always, is to figure out just how much weight a label can carry for us and then not pile on any more than that.
We might as well start with the bad uses of labels. To quote Wayne Campbell:
Was it Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten who said, “If you label me, you negate me”?
Labels can be a way of removing an actual person — who may have not only nuanced views, but also the ability to update those views in a sensible way when presented with new evidence or well-reasoned objections — from the conversation and replacing her with a static position. Here’s how Kevin describes labeling in the context of climate science:
Every time a researcher gets into name-calling, every time a researcher decides to label another researcher for the convenience of a journalist, a lay person or his own sense of self-worth, the labeling researcher diminishes his/her own ability to honestly and directly evaluate the science of others. Instead of allowing the work of others to rest or not rest on its merits, a labeling researcher inserts one word of scorn to stand in for an entire body of work. This is laziness at the least and intellectual dishonesty at the worst. By now this skeptic-tagging has gone far beyond simply providing a guide to the debate for the uninitiated. It has now become an excuse for dismissing the ideas of others without credibly evaluating them. It has become an excuse for tribalism within the research community, and an opportunity for lay people to join tribes based on their political orientation.
It’s worth noting that “skeptic” is not the only label that can do this kind of dismissive work. You can also dismiss the “true believers” (or those who “drank the kool-aid”) to indicate that they have hopped on the bandwagon of an exciting new theory or line of research too quickly and uncritically. The suggestion, of course, is that the true believers have been swayed by the coolness of the theory, rather than by evidence. In some quarters, there is disdain for those who do “computer experiments” (because they don’t bother attending to the complexity of the real systems that “real experimentalists” tackle). In other quarters, aspersions are cast upon those more focused on gathering experimental data than on building or refining models as “stamp collectors”. One can find dismissive labeling within a given field (indeed, ask a graduate student to give a quick account of what the folks in other research groups in the department do, and you’re likely to get quite a range of such labels). And, one can find labels used by those in different fields to dismiss the work of the neighboring fields. (There’s some of this on display in the comments on Steve Fuller’s essay at Crooked Timber.)
I agree with Kevin that such labels are problematic when describing a scientific disagreement to someone on the outside. Labeling your opponents puts your interpretation of what they are up to (and the flaws you see as inherent in their approach) forward as if it were their position (rather than their-position-as-you-see-it). And, it generally doesn’t include your opponents’ best arguments for their position. Worse than this, asking someone from the outside to accept your labeling of the situation is a kind of appeal to authority that is in tension with the idea that, at its core, science is about supporting our claims with evidence from the world.
Clearly, this doesn’t mean that some positions aren’t wacky. But, it seems like it would be better to establish that by leading the outsider through a careful examination of the position and how it is, or is not, supported by the available evidence, rather than saying, “The guy who advocates that position is sadly mistaken.” Maybe that guy is mistaken. Better to let his inability to make a convincing case for his position from the evidence demonstrate that he is mistaken than to let a chummy scientist in the know label him as mistaken and pay his position no further mind.
“What about the cranks who ignore demonstrations that their positions are mistaken?” I hear you ask. “How many times are we supposed to explain, again, all the problems with their views?” This is where having a good scientific literature, packed with papers that are clear both in their support for and in their critique of various views, can be handy. Get those demonstrations into print! The putative cranks then must respond to those critiques, or they will be conspicuous in their avoidance of them.
Deep down, I don’t think most scientistswant to be winning debates by labeling their opponents. It’s much more satisfying to build a demonstration that is so convincing that your opponents cannot help but be moved by it. Honest disagreements about the facts, or about what we can conclude from them, are not indicative of dishonesty or willful ignorance or being a bad person. Being able to give a view with which you diasgree a fair hearing is part of the scientist’s job description, after all.
Politics, of course, might be playing by different rules.
So of course, to the extent that labeling heads off honest engagement with the claims put forward by other scientists, it is something to be avoided. However, labels can convey useful information that helps improve scientist-on-scientist communication. Labels might convey important information about someone’s training, telling us something about the kind of theoretical and experimental tool box they are likely to bring to bear on their research. As well, labels can tell us something about the space of problems within a given scientific field that a researcher is exploring, or the kind of instrumentation they use. Far from being dismissive, labels may help us identify starting assumptions of the people we’re engaging, types of relevant data they may be gathering or may feel comfortable interpreting, or critical disputes in the literature about which they are likely to have a view. A real engagement with another scientist will move beyond the hunches one forms from these labels, but the labels provide some basis to begin that engagement (if you like, a preliminary hypothesis about what the scientist with whom you’re engaging and what he or she will be able to contribute to the dialogue).
Indeed, there are some labels — like “scientist” — that identify something like a shared set of standards that all the people tagged with that label are striving to live up to. To the extent that a label actually means something — to the extent that “scientist” identifies someone who acknowledges the shared standards — it might be appropriate for the people wearing that label to police the boundaries and make sure that the label isn’t claimed by someone who’s not acknowledging the standards. As well, the people wearing the label may need to police themselves, to ensure that they are not denying the label of “scientist” to those who really are recognizing the standards simply because they disagree about some matter of fact, or of interpretation, or of how to act on the knowledge in formulating policy.
The key is to figure out what shared commitments define scientists, and to be very clear that any disagreements beyond those shared commitments are disagreements among scientists — not disagreements that show that one party is a scientist and the other is not.
It’s a good summary. The labeling issue came out in the comments and I didn’t respond directly to it as I think I was waiting to see how people shook out on it. Sylvia sums it correctly when she says, “Labels do serve a purpose when properly used.” I do agree with this, but I would stress to clarify that there are different intentions in labeling and that’s where the devil-in-the-details lurks.
Labeling for the sake of deliniating expertise in the various subgenres of a field is entirely appropriate. For instance, I am an observational physical oceanographer, whereas somebody else is a numerical modeler of physical oceanography. It’s an important distinction to us that gives us very different views on our field, and without explaining the difference to a lay person, that lay person might think us both pursuing identical information.
Labeling for the purpose of dismissal of a POV is what I was after. Some who have been labeled “climate skeptics” are true denialists who can legitimately be labeled such. Other are labeled (incorrectly) simply because they have a nuanced position that does not kneel to the crystalized POV of the mainstream.
Your last paragraph is right on and sums it well. It fits for climate science and science in general, as was your intention, I think. The ultimate problem – the problem I was trying to illustrate – is when the scientists themselves lose sight of their role as honest intellectual discussers and give thirsty non-experts fuel for a labeling war.