One of the first things new psychology majors learn is that their discipline is a science and that it makes use of the scientific method to address questions about human nature. However, much less frequently do we engage them in discussion about the human process by which science produces knowledge.
In 1974, Ian Mitroff set out to answer this question empirically with a pioneering investigation of 40 NASA scientists involved in the moon landing project. His goal was to understand “how science gets done” and he used a range of methods including repeated interviews with each scientist over a three-year period. Published as The Subjective Side of Science (Mitroff, 1974), Mitroff’s qualitative inquiry was especially noteworthy in view of conventional views of legitimate psychological methods that were in operation at the time of his analysis and for the acutely philosophical lens he brought to his social psychological investigation of science practice. His analysis yields insights into the many complex ways disposition, value commitments, cognitive style, and attitudes enter into the production of scientific knowledge at the highest level of innovation (with no claim that such knowledge is reducible to social or psychological processes). A central problem he pursued was how scientists select from competing theories given equivalent evidence and their motivations for relinquishing theories in which they are personally invested. Given the irreducibly social and personal aspects of these knowledge-generating processes, Mitroff saw his work as challenging what he called the “Storybook View of Science,” that is, science as a detached, dispassionate endeavor entirely different from other forms of human activity.
Over the past two decades, the use of qualitative methods to investigate science has expanded significantly, especially within the cognitive science and philosophy of science communities, many of whom acknowledge the importance of Mitroff’s comprehensive study.
A special section of the June 2024 issue of Qualitative Psychology is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of The Subjective Side of Science. The section features an interview with Mitroff on his scholarly sources of inspiration, methodological decisions, and broad psychological and philosophical importance of his study. The interview is followed by contributions from several contemporary philosophers of science or philosophically oriented who, like Mitroff, use qualitative methods to inform the question of “how science gets done.”
Sabina Leonelli and Rachel Ankeny provide a very helpful introduction to the contemporary qualitative study of science, situating their research in the philosophy of the biological and biomedical sciences. They reflect on the advantages of using qualitative approaches for understanding: (1) the role of embodied knowledge in data curation and modelling; (2) reliance on non-scientific sources for biological classification; and (3) how funding priorities channel scientific reasoning and practice. These examples demonstrate the value of qualitative methods to identify novel research directions, refine and augment philosophically motivated research questions, investigate the rationales and procedures through which particular scientific choices become ingrained in research practices, and question the implications of such habits vis-a-vis norms for what does and should count as ‘best practice’ in particular scientific fields.
Nancy Nersessian’s paper, Why/How to study scientific thinking, argues that an adequate study of scientific thinking requires an integrative analysis of the cognitive, social, material, and cultural aspects of authentic problem-solving by scientists. Such analysis can only be obtained through gathering data on scientists’ investigative practices through historical case analysis of the records of past science or in situ studies that use ethnographic observational and interview methods of data collection and analysis, each of which has affordances and limitations. Nersessian offers examples from her own historical and ethnographic studies and makes a compelling case for the qualitative methodological approach to studying scientific reasoning for which she is considered a pioneer.
Michael Stuart begins by outlining four roles that qualitative methods can play in normative philosophy of science. They can be used to 1) disprove empirical claims about scientific practice made by philosophers of science, 2) support empirical claims about scientific practice made by philosophers of science, 3) raise new questions and center new phenomena for philosophical discussion, and 4) directly increase the understanding that investigators have about scientific practice. His comments stem from his own use of interviews and observations to investigate the role of scientific imagination in several scientific research laboratories (Stuart, 2022).
Kieran O’Doherty, Cory Fairley, Dan Badulescu, and Alexis Fabricius focus on public deliberation relating to science – science in the public sector. They make use of discourse analysis to foreground the incorporation of ontological statements in scientific and other forms of exchange, which are generally left implicit. They describe the qualitative methods they developed to examine implicit ontologies in scientific discourse and to illustrate how they may be associated with values and ways of acting in the world, drawing on data from a series of interviews with scientific experts and professionals on the topic of forest health. They illustrate the connections between the implicit ontological commitments and implicit human values and demonstrate how ontological presumptions about the nature of forest health invite particular metrics and measurements for evaluation.
Aims of the special section
The editors of the special section hope that it will stimulate new thinking about science as a human practice, challenging the “storybook” view that tends to be upheld on both sides of the “science wars.” They also hope to encourage awareness of the broad range of ways qualitative methods have been used to study thinking and reasoning, the kinds of questions the use of these methods can inform, and the exciting new directions in which they show promise for future insights into topics that impact not only science but humanity.
References
Mitroff, I. I. (1974). The subjective side of science: A philosophical inquiry into the psychology of the Apollo moon scientistsElsevier.
Stuart, Michael. (2022). Sharpening the tools of imagination. Synthese. 200. 10.1007/s11229-022-03939-w.