Thursday, April 24, 2014

Does feminism have a problem with science?

It's more than a few years old, but still a pretty good read:
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. (geekfeminism.org)
I don't think that feminist blog world, of feminism in general, is anti-science in any conscious sort of way, but most sites could use a science blogger, or, at least, someone skilled in interpreting data if they're going to be reporting studies.

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