Science is not the oppressor.

This post was originally published at Restructure! Some tense and time markers have been updated.

Some anti-oppressive thinkers distrust powerful institutions, and end up distrusting the scientific institution and even scientific knowledge itself. However, scientific knowledge and scientific practise are not inherently oppressive. The oppressions that appear to come from science actually come from the upper-class white male domination of scientific disciplines.

Science is not the enemy; the practise of science is a productive method for understanding ourselves and our world. When some scientific studies overgeneralize and/or neglect certain groups of people, the problem is bad science, not science.

One of the serious problems with the lack of diversity in the practise within certain knowledge domains is that some important aspects of reality are not even considered, leading the researchers to overgeneralize and draw incorrect conclusions. This problem comes from the fact that scientific practise is a social activity, subject to the biases and prejudices of the scientists. In contrast, the scientific methods of gathering empirical data to refute hypotheses, and using statistical methods to determine statistical significance, are perfectly sound.

It is illogical to assume without reason that the results of a given scientific study (especially one that you do not particularly like) must be false. There is no contradiction between truth and justice. Anti-oppressive thinkers should not be afraid of science.

For example, in a Feministing post about using yoghurt to treat yeast infections, Courtney wrote:

There’s no question that the personal is the political, even when it comes to our most individuated health and wellness choices. But it’s got me wondering, is it “less feminist” to resort to store-bought cures or is this one of those things that we should lay off on politicizing?

Commenter FrumiousB responded:

Well, if you found it by Googling, it must be right. Since when is trusting random strangers to dispense medical advice a feminist action? Since when is using evidence based medicine resorting to the man? And how do you know yogurt doesn’t have any drug interactions? Next time you want medical advice off the internet, use Medline.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/

Of course, by searching Medline, one can find a scientific study that concludes that ingesting yoghurt that contains Lactobacillus acidophilus reduces vulvovaginal candidal (yeast) infections by threefold, which is an example how scientific knowledge can be empowering by giving women more choices. Of course, this does not mean that using store-bought cures is “less feminist”. Courtney received a lot of criticism for this line of reasoning from Feministing commenters, although there were also many anti-science supporters. In response to a commenter that advocated trusting folk remedies over “traditionally male-dominated western medicine”, commenter BluePencils wrote:

No, it’s not a feminist issue. It has nothing to do with the patriarchy. It has to do with anecdotal evidence versus the scientific method. I’ll go with the scientific method, thank you. Yes, there are natural remedies that work, of course there are. It’s just rare to be informed of any side effects and interactions, which leads to many people believing that if a treatment is “natural,” it doesn’t have any side effects. Which is ridiculous.

In addition to its anti-intellectual and self-oppressive properties, science-hating by some prominent feminist bloggers isolates women and feminists who love science. Commenter moley wrote:

Oh, and can we stop saying that science is one giant woman-hating shit show?

As a female scientist, I am fully aware that there have been extremely unethical practices in the past, and that we’ve yet to reach a point where there is equal attention paid to men and women’s health, but c’mon man. The venom with which you so flatly shoot down science is really frustrated. I’m a chick, and I love science. Not in a, “wow this is interesting” kind of way, but in a “I want to devote the rest of my life to this” kind of way.

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