When Scientists Function Like Priests
The Paradox of Scientific Authority
Here’s a paradox: The scientific project originated as a form of dissent against authoritarianism, specifically in its clerical form. And yet today, when a celebrity scientist says anything (even an unscientific statement), her scientific authority grants her a credibility on par with the clerics of old. Why should we care what scientists have to say about anything outside their specific domain of research? And yet, we extrapolate that a great physicist or biologist must also be a great political scientist, trend forecaster, cultural diagnostician, and/or life coach. As a culture, we seem confused about what is and isn’t scientific—and the public-facing scientists don’t help.
Of course, being a great Bible scholar doesn’t make one a healer, and being a great pastoral presence doesn’t make one a great ruler; but Biblical scholarship doesn’t pretend to be rooted in reason; it acknowledges Revelation as its basis. Science in its empirical form is, by its own lights, a rational endeavor, rooted in the claim to be repeatable, rigorous, and comprehensible. And yet, so much of the anthropology of science is anything but rational. Culturally speaking, scientists are the new “holy men.”
Where should a scientist’s authority begin and end?
I’m not saying scientists shouldn’t express their non-expert views in public, but do they have a responsibility to emphasize when they are speaking as scientists and when as non-scientists? Or, if science is a “way of life,” a holistic system in which the scientist never stops being a scientist, shouldn’t the rules of scientific method preclude scientists from over-speculation?
A related problem (it seems to me) is that scientific authority is not the same as moral authority. When these are conflated, it leads to scientism on the one hand, and a blanket suspicion of science, on the other.
Yet drawing a neat line between is and ought, and between the empirical and the speculative, is difficult. Who decides where it is, and how?
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