Friday July 18, 2003 at 5:13 PM
Is Objectivity Dead?
Appearing in Politics
Earlier this week, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) sponsored a conference entitled “Conflicted Science: Corporate Influence on Scientific Research and Science-Based Policy.” As you might imagine, the subject of the conference was the inherent conflicts of interest that arise when corporations fund scientific research.
Although I applaud CSPI’s attempt to expose the inherent biases and conflicts that attend the intersection of corporate profits and scientific rigor, such conflicts of interest are an all too familiar aspect of life in history’s largest Capitalist nation. Unfortunately the notion of integrity has gone sorely lacking as evidenced by the current debate about the exaggerations and questionable intelligence that helped lead us to war. Emblematic of this issue is the fact that phrases like “unbiased reporting”, “accounting standards”, and “rule of law” have given way to the more accurate terms “embedded journalists”, “creative accounting”, and “judicial activism”.
Objectivity as a concept appears to be the latest casualty of the ongoing arms race between those who would hope to inform the citizenry versus those that would hope to misinform it. Unfortunately we will all suffer as we steadily lose our trust in the institutions, professions, and individuals that provide the fundamental integrity required of an open, productive, and creative society.
In it’s stead we are left with a discredited foreign intelligence apparatus, quantitative Rorshok tests masquerading as Whitehouse budget projections, men of the cloth calling for their God to strike down members of the U.S. Supreme Court, Presidential sycophants parading as comedians, and entire broadcast networks acting as policy advocates.
How are we to ever frame the debate now that we’ve substituted the virtues of independence, impartiality, and objectivity with an unquestioning devotion to patriotism, progress, and partisanship? If we can’t begin to rise above the din of opinion and unsubstantiated fact so characteristic of CrossFire, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the United Nations Security Council, how can we possibly hope to solve the significant political, environmental, and humanitarian issues confronting us? What do we have left once we dismiss the sanctity of fact and the existence of truth?
