Bernard C. Beins
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As all researchers know, not every question is amenable to an empirical, scientific
approach. If one cannot develop a reliable measurement of an idea, one cannot test it
scientifically. Thus one might best address questions of morality and religion nonscienti-
fically, even if one could scientifically study behavioral elements of religiosity.
For example, Galton’s (1872) study of the efficacy of prayer investigated a religious
topic: Do people who are the recipients of prayer (e.g., the Royal Family) live longer
than others who are not so fortunate (e.g., lawyers)? Was his research scientific? It met
the four criteria for science: objective, data-driven, public, and verifiable. So one must
conclude it was scientific. It clearly was not perfect, but perfection is not one of the
characteristics of science. On the other hand, the question of whether a particular
behavior is moral or ethical is not one that lends itself to a scientific approach. This is
a particularly useful exercise when discussing the difference between science and
pseudoscience.
How can one know whether one’s beliefs are veridical? Unfortunately, because knowl-
edge is always provisional on the emergence of new information, it is difficult to know.
And, in science, truth is an elusive concept, one that researchers have essentially replaced
with the concept of level of confidence in a finding (Salsburg, 2002).
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (1998) recognized the difficulty of knowing
what to believe. His contribution to the discussion of belief, in the context of scientific
literacy, was to opine that knowing how to choose experts and to understand their limita-
tions and biases does not require knowledge of science itself. His approach reflects a useful
version of scientific literacy. It differs from blind reliance on authority because there is a
recognition of limitations and the need to identify sources in whom one can have a high
level of confidence.
How should students approach a decision on what to believe? They cannot possibly
read everything relevant to a topic or conduct their own studies, so they are often reliant
on professors or other authority figures. But the students have to decide, in general, which
authority has greatest credibility. A type of meta-knowledge is important: knowledge of
sources of knowledge.
Peirce’s (1877) scientific approach, as powerful as it is, still poses limitations. His
assumption that “it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may
be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency—by something
upon which our thinking has no effect” (¶ 31) fails to recognize that one’s assumptions
and theoretical perspectives render facts contingent and, potentially, impermanent. One
might gain great confidence in each individual datum, but the data that lead to an emer-
gent theory can be replaced by other facts, leading to other theories.
The Popular Media
The popular media provide a stream of stories about scientific findings, including those in
psychology. Journalists are not scientists, though, so one must consider the degree to which
their reporting accurately reflects research findings. By the same token, scientists are not
journalists; they may fail to communicate effectively with nonscientists.