Scientific Bias

Contrary to the general notion of scientific as objective, certain scientists and philosophers postulate that bias is, in fact, essential to scientific progress. In examining these contrarians’ claim, I will evaluate the role of bias, specifically gendered bias, in science. To accomplish this task, I shall first provide three fundamental frameworks: the idea of situated knowledge with respect to gender, the difference between “gender” and “sex” (this difference will add clarity to these terms as they are used throughout the paper), and the full description and definition of scientific bias. Then, I will summarize three examples of bias that will in turn engender a discussion of gender’s role in science. Ultimately, we will see that situated knowledge in scientific bias can …show more content…
These aforementioned “intrinsic factors” take many forms, but essentially, they are residual byproducts of past experiences, worldviews, backgrounds, sentiments, etc. Think, for example, about the issue of sexual harassment. Men are far more likely to attain information about sexual harassment in a third-person manner: statistics, listening to first-person accounts, etc. Women, however, are far more likely to be victims of sexual harassment; disproportionately, women will have a first-person understanding of sexual harassment. On the whole, therefore, women likely have a vastly different, more intimate understanding of what sexual harassment is. Thus, due to the variety and uniqueness with which men and women may internalize sexual harassment, they likely attach different meanings to the same concept. This phenomenon, in which one concept can be interpreted very differently because subtle, innate differences, is situated knowledge. Situated knowledge will return in this paper’s ultimate analysis of