Statistics, Social Science, and the Culture of Objectivity

Contrary to the presumption common in the social sciences, that culture and rationality are in opposition and mutually exclusive of each other - a presumption shared by such different approaches as game theory, rational choice theory and cultural anthropology - , the author emphazises that cultures always have their own rationalities. Standards of reasonableness cannot be thought of as universal, but inevitably reflect culture. Rationality is conditioned, so the author argues, by political forms, economic circumstances, institutions, laws, and customs. This is also true for cultures of objectivity, which are based on the rejection of what is usually conceived of as subjective, linked to emotions and to the personal. The examples of the historic struggles relating to the profession of accountants and the invention of cost-benefit analysis in the United States enable the author to put forward the argument that the quest for objectivity is in itself the cultural expression of a need emerging within societies where political order is not self- evident. Not only bureaucracies impose general standards of administration to avoid severe political conflicts, but various outsiders in different spheres of a society try and manage to gain credibility by escaping what is tainted by personal interest and subjectivity. From this perspective, the author identifies the insistence on impersonal rules in science as a cultural response to conditions of distrust within the corresponding disciplines and in the larger society, and discusses the uses made of statistics in the social sciences characterised by the reduction of quantification to impersonal, unitary, almost mechanical, strategies of analysis.Contrary to the presumption common in the social sciences, that culture and rationality are in opposition and mutually exclusive of each other - a presumption shared by such different approaches as game theory, rational choice theory and cultural anthropology - , the author emphazises that cultures always have their own rationalities. Standards of reasonableness cannot be thought of as universal, but inevitably reflect culture. Rationality is conditioned, so the author argues, by political forms, economic circumstances, institutions, laws, and customs. This is also true for cultures of objectivity, which are based on the rejection of what is usually conceived of as subjective, linked to emotions and to the personal. The examples of the historic struggles relating to the profession of accountants and the invention of cost-benefit analysis in the United States enable the author to put forward the argument that the quest for objectivity is in itself the cultural expression of a need emerging within societies where political order is not self- evident. Not only bureaucracies impose general standards of administration to avoid severe political conflicts, but various outsiders in different spheres of a society try and manage to gain credibility by escaping what is tainted by personal interest and subjectivity. From this perspective, the author identifies the insistence on impersonal rules in science as a cultural response to conditions of distrust within the corresponding disciplines and in the larger society, and discusses the uses made of statistics in the social sciences characterised by the reduction of quantification to impersonal, unitary, almost mechanical, strategies of analysis

New Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Quantitative Genetics

The aim of this collection is to bring together philosophical and historical perspectives to address long-standing issues in the interpretation, utility, and impacts of quantitative genetics methods and findings. Methodological approaches and the underlying scientific understanding of genetics and heredity have transformed since the field’s inception. These advances have brought with them new philosophical issues regarding the interpretation and understanding of quantitative genetic results. The contributions in this issue demonstrate that there is still work to be done integrating old and new methodological and conceptual frameworks. In some cases, new results are interpreted using assumptions based on old concepts and methodologies that need to be explicitly recognised and updated. In other cases, new philosophical tools can be employed to synthesise historical quantitative genetics work with modern methodologies and findings. This introductory article surveys three general themes that have dominated philosophical discussion of quantitative genetics throughout history: 1. How methodologies have changed and transformed our knowledge and interpretations; 2. Whether or not quantitative genetics can offer explanations relating to causation and prediction; 3. The importance of defining the phenotypes under study. We situate the contributions in this special issue within a historical framework addressing these three themes

‘The invention of counting: the statistical measurement of literacy in nineteenth-century England’

This article examines the invention of counting literacy on a national basis in nineteenth-century Britain. Through an analysis of Registrar Generals' reports, it describes how the early statisticians wrestled with the implications of their new-found capacity to describe a nation's communications skills in a single table and how they were unable to escape their model of a society of isolated individuals divided into the literate and illiterate. The continuing influence of this approach is traced in the recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIACC)

The emergence of modern statistics in agricultural science : Analysis of variance, experimental design and the reshaping of research at Rothamsted Experimental Station, 1919–1933

During the twentieth century statistical methods have transformed research in the experimental and social sciences. Qualitative evidence has largely been replaced by quantitative results and the tools of statistical inference have helped foster a new ideal of objectivity in scientific knowledge. The paper will investigate this transformation by considering the genesis of analysis of variance and experimental design, statistical methods nowadays taught in every elementary course of statistics for the experimental and social sciences. These methods were developed by the mathematician and geneticist R. A. Fisher during the 1920s, while he was working at Rothamsted Experimental Station, where agricultural research was in turn reshaped by Fisher’s methods. Analysis of variance and experimental design required new practices and instruments in field and laboratory research, and imposed a redistribution of expertise among statisticians, experimental scientists and the farm staff. On the other hand the use of statistical methods in agricultural science called for a systematization of information management and made computing an activity integral to the experimental research done at Rothamsted, permanently integrating the statisticians’ tools and expertise into the station research programme. Fisher’s statistical methods did not remain confined within agricultural research and by the end of the 1950s they had come to stay in psychology, sociology, education, chemistry, medicine, engineering, economics, quality control, just to mention a few of the disciplines which adopted them

Stabbing News: Articulating Crime Statistics in the Newsroom

There is a comprehensive body of scholarly work regarding the way media represent crime and how it is constructed in the media narrative as a news item. These works have often suggested that in many cases public anxieties in relation to crime levels are not justified by actual data. However, few works have examined the gathering and dissemination of crime statistics by non-specialist journalists and the way crime statistics are gathered and used in the newsroom. This article seeks to explore in a comparative manner how journalists in newsrooms access and interpret quantitative data when producing stories related to crime. In so doing, the article highlights the problems and limitations of journalists in dealing with crime statistics as a news source, while assessing statistics-related methodologies and skills used in the newsrooms across the United Kingdom when producing stories related to urban crime

Bureaucracy as a Lens for Analyzing and Designing Algorithmic Systems

Scholarship on algorithms has drawn on the analogy between algorithmic systems and bureaucracies to diagnose shortcomings in algorithmic decision-making. We extend the analogy further by drawing on Michel Crozier’s theory of bureaucratic organizations to analyze the relationship between algorithmic and human decision-making power. We present algorithms as analogous to impartial bureaucratic rules for controlling action, and argue that discretionary decision-making power in algorithmic systems accumulates at locations where uncertainty about the operation of algorithms persists. This key point of our essay connects with Alkhatib and Bernstein’s theory of ’street-level algorithms’, and highlights that the role of human discretion in algorithmic systems is to accommodate uncertain situations which inflexible algorithms cannot handle. We conclude by discussing how the analysis and design of algorithmic systems could seek to identify and cultivate important sources of uncertainty, to enable the human discretionary work that enhances systemic resilience in the face of algorithmic errors.Peer reviewe

The Stakes in Bayh-Dole: Public Values Beyond the Pace of Innovation

Evaluation studies of the Bayh-Dole Act are generally concerned with the pace of innovation or the transgressions to the independence of research. While these concerns are important, I propose here to expand the range of public values considered in assessing Bayh-Dole and formulating future reforms. To this end, I first examine the changes in the terms of the Bayh-Dole debate and the drift in its design. Neoliberal ideas have had a definitive influence on U.S. innovation policy for the last thirty years, including legislation to strengthen patent protection. Moreover, the neoliberal policy agenda is articulated and justified in the interest of “competitiveness.” Rhetorically, this agenda equates competitiveness with economic growth and this with the public interest. Against that backdrop, I use Public Value Failure criteria to show that values such as political equality, transparency, and fairness in the distribution of the benefits of innovation, are worth considering to counter the “policy drift” of Bayh-Dole