Science Writing as Articulation from Nathaniel Rivers on Vimeo.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Science Writing as Articulation
A short video outlining the theory informing ENGL 401: New Media Science Writing (Fall 2012 at St. Louis University). The short video is part of a larger, collaborative, and multimedia research project currently underway at SLU.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Gut Over Glut
Introduction
In 1990 Carolyn Miller took decision science ("a theory of choice with an accompanying battery of 'decision aids' for 'modeling problems of choice' in management and public policy"(163)*) to task for both what Wayne Booth calls motivism and for what Chaim Perelman refers to as reducing "problems of action" to "problems of knowledge." Miller dings decision science for a few other things; I am interested only in these two for my present purposes (as I am likewise thinking about my Computers and Writing presentation in May): the dangers of motivism and the action/knowledge problem in public life and how rhetoric should respond pedagogically.
Troubling Decision Science
Miller defines decision science as a kind of rhetoric in that it is a "theory of choice" (163). Nevertheless, Miller argues it is a problematic rhetoric because it abdicates or avoids reasoning about values, what Booth terms motivism. My more cynical response is that those folks in economics and management who typically employ decision science are avoiding addressing values purposefully to prevent them from being challenge (but this is, perhaps, another problematic kind of motivism that Burke admonishes against).
The second issue Miller addresses is how decision science boils problems of action (what should we do? should we do something at all?) down to problems of knowledge (how much will is cost? what are the risks and rewards?). The problem is that in reducing action to knowledge decision science erases conflict and avoids the question of values.
For example of how both aspects of decision science problematically operate out in the world (one of Miller's chief concerns), I would draw our attention to the NOVA documentary "The Spy Factory". The oddly titled documentary explores the role of the National Security Agency (NSA), in combination with the FBI and the CIA, in the "intelligence failures" preceding and following the 9/11 terror attacks. In particular, the issues of motivism and problems of action/knowledge show-up in the Bush administration's response to those attacks. (Obviously, this blog post is limited and much of the work now being done within the intelligence services is to be commended. This post and the documentary it draws on have a necessarily limited perspective. That being said, I am responding to stated desires and policies.)
In brief, the Bush administration's response was to remove barriers to searches and spying so as to increase the amount or volume of information available to our intelligence agencies. Many critiques of this policy -- beyond the legal and moral ones -- persuasively point out that information or the lack thereof was not the issue -- was not the root of the problem. There was enough intelligence in terms of raw data. Indeed, the ease with which government investigators were able to piece together the events leading up to the attacks suggests as much. The problem was a problem of action, of value-laden decision-making (not "do we have enough information?" but "should we be sharing it with other agencies and how and when?"). What was required, to borrow from Miller, was an ability to reason about values, about the culture of the intelligence community, and about how information was allowed or not allowed to circulate. Most importantly, however, reducing this problem of action to a problem of knowledge has potentially threatened core legal principles and not made us all that much safer. A primary contributor to the documentary, and a long time historian of the NSA, concludes the NOVA documentary this way:
Conclusion: Rhetoric's Pedagogy for Deciding
To return to Miller's assertions for a rhetorical understanding of decision science (and for an accounting of how decision science has influenced pedagogy and so impacted decision making), I would ask what all this means for rhetoric's pedagogy. How might those of us in rhetoric teach decision-making in and against the context of decision science?
If traditionally education has been about information (P. Friere's influence notwithstanding), what do we make of such persuasive arguments against decision science, which is largely predicated upon this Enlightenment ideal? I would propose (although I am far from the only one) that rhetoric draw on recent research on instincts and gut feelings. For instance, the work on Gerd Gigerenzer and his book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious is quite informative (yikes!) in this direction. I argue that an education that would avoid motivism and the reduction of action to knowledge should focus less on "information" and more on "instinct."
I like a focus on instinct because instincts become an excellent way to address how we reason about values. In essence, instincts are about response-ability. They are about patterns or habits of engagement. Instincts filter what information counts as valuable and they motivate particular actions over others. Instincts are, in other words, were the rubber of values meets the road of action. Values, however, and as Gigerenzer argues, are not beyond human (pedagogical) agency and they are not automatic. Instincts, he argues, are cultivated. Instincts are neither value free nor beyond rhetorical deliberation and persuasion. Indeed, instincts must necessarily be cultivated precisely because they are not pre-specified (we could take numerous examples of this from athletics where it is the honing of instincts that is so much a part of practice and improvement. The work of Debra Hawhee is valuable in this regard).
In addition to being a call to discuss values (or patterns of response), instincts are a way around one of the oft-described problems of teaching rhetoric, which presumes to address the contingent and situational (thus making the teaching of formulas problematic). Rhetoric strikes me as instinctual (which are always geared towards problems of action) rather than formulaic (which strikes me as largely focused on problems of information). I would argue that what we (should) teach are instincts. In so arguing, I necessarily invite a discussion about what kinds of instincts. And it is a discussion of what instincts and what values we should teach that potentially protects us from the troubles of decision science and from the charge of motivism, which is as damaging to teachers as it is economists.
*Miller, Carolyn R. "The Rhetoric of Decision Science, or Herbert A. Simon Says." The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Ed. Herbert A. Simon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
In 1990 Carolyn Miller took decision science ("a theory of choice with an accompanying battery of 'decision aids' for 'modeling problems of choice' in management and public policy"(163)*) to task for both what Wayne Booth calls motivism and for what Chaim Perelman refers to as reducing "problems of action" to "problems of knowledge." Miller dings decision science for a few other things; I am interested only in these two for my present purposes (as I am likewise thinking about my Computers and Writing presentation in May): the dangers of motivism and the action/knowledge problem in public life and how rhetoric should respond pedagogically.
Troubling Decision Science
Miller defines decision science as a kind of rhetoric in that it is a "theory of choice" (163). Nevertheless, Miller argues it is a problematic rhetoric because it abdicates or avoids reasoning about values, what Booth terms motivism. My more cynical response is that those folks in economics and management who typically employ decision science are avoiding addressing values purposefully to prevent them from being challenge (but this is, perhaps, another problematic kind of motivism that Burke admonishes against).
The second issue Miller addresses is how decision science boils problems of action (what should we do? should we do something at all?) down to problems of knowledge (how much will is cost? what are the risks and rewards?). The problem is that in reducing action to knowledge decision science erases conflict and avoids the question of values.
Problems of action involve conflict between people; even solitary deliberators negotiate conflicts between possible versions of themselves. Problems of action are "essentially contestable"; problems of knowledge are not. (175)Decision Science Troubles the World
For example of how both aspects of decision science problematically operate out in the world (one of Miller's chief concerns), I would draw our attention to the NOVA documentary "The Spy Factory". The oddly titled documentary explores the role of the National Security Agency (NSA), in combination with the FBI and the CIA, in the "intelligence failures" preceding and following the 9/11 terror attacks. In particular, the issues of motivism and problems of action/knowledge show-up in the Bush administration's response to those attacks. (Obviously, this blog post is limited and much of the work now being done within the intelligence services is to be commended. This post and the documentary it draws on have a necessarily limited perspective. That being said, I am responding to stated desires and policies.)
In brief, the Bush administration's response was to remove barriers to searches and spying so as to increase the amount or volume of information available to our intelligence agencies. Many critiques of this policy -- beyond the legal and moral ones -- persuasively point out that information or the lack thereof was not the issue -- was not the root of the problem. There was enough intelligence in terms of raw data. Indeed, the ease with which government investigators were able to piece together the events leading up to the attacks suggests as much. The problem was a problem of action, of value-laden decision-making (not "do we have enough information?" but "should we be sharing it with other agencies and how and when?"). What was required, to borrow from Miller, was an ability to reason about values, about the culture of the intelligence community, and about how information was allowed or not allowed to circulate. Most importantly, however, reducing this problem of action to a problem of knowledge has potentially threatened core legal principles and not made us all that much safer. A primary contributor to the documentary, and a long time historian of the NSA, concludes the NOVA documentary this way:
Is this flood of information making us any safer? [...] We should have been safe the way it was [...] How much information is enough -- and won't too much information end up making the world more dangerous?At first this seems counter-intuitive: how can too much information be a bad thing? If you are a decision scientist and assume that "if our information were more complete or our calculations more accurate, we could know with complete certainty whether it will rain today" (Miller 175), then it very much is against your intuition. However, if the problem is one of action (one of human relations and values and contingencies and probabilities), which I think it is, then it is rather reasonable to question the absolute value of information. And I would suggest, as I move to conclude this discussion in rhetoric's pedagogy, that it is precisely in the direction of intuition/instinct that we should head.
Conclusion: Rhetoric's Pedagogy for Deciding
To return to Miller's assertions for a rhetorical understanding of decision science (and for an accounting of how decision science has influenced pedagogy and so impacted decision making), I would ask what all this means for rhetoric's pedagogy. How might those of us in rhetoric teach decision-making in and against the context of decision science?
If traditionally education has been about information (P. Friere's influence notwithstanding), what do we make of such persuasive arguments against decision science, which is largely predicated upon this Enlightenment ideal? I would propose (although I am far from the only one) that rhetoric draw on recent research on instincts and gut feelings. For instance, the work on Gerd Gigerenzer and his book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious is quite informative (yikes!) in this direction. I argue that an education that would avoid motivism and the reduction of action to knowledge should focus less on "information" and more on "instinct."
I like a focus on instinct because instincts become an excellent way to address how we reason about values. In essence, instincts are about response-ability. They are about patterns or habits of engagement. Instincts filter what information counts as valuable and they motivate particular actions over others. Instincts are, in other words, were the rubber of values meets the road of action. Values, however, and as Gigerenzer argues, are not beyond human (pedagogical) agency and they are not automatic. Instincts, he argues, are cultivated. Instincts are neither value free nor beyond rhetorical deliberation and persuasion. Indeed, instincts must necessarily be cultivated precisely because they are not pre-specified (we could take numerous examples of this from athletics where it is the honing of instincts that is so much a part of practice and improvement. The work of Debra Hawhee is valuable in this regard).
In addition to being a call to discuss values (or patterns of response), instincts are a way around one of the oft-described problems of teaching rhetoric, which presumes to address the contingent and situational (thus making the teaching of formulas problematic). Rhetoric strikes me as instinctual (which are always geared towards problems of action) rather than formulaic (which strikes me as largely focused on problems of information). I would argue that what we (should) teach are instincts. In so arguing, I necessarily invite a discussion about what kinds of instincts. And it is a discussion of what instincts and what values we should teach that potentially protects us from the troubles of decision science and from the charge of motivism, which is as damaging to teachers as it is economists.
*Miller, Carolyn R. "The Rhetoric of Decision Science, or Herbert A. Simon Says." The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Ed. Herbert A. Simon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
GUEST BLOG: Why the Happy are Nuts*
Today's blog post is from guest contributor, and sometime commenter, Thomas Rivers.
Sophist_Monster concludes:
Bentall first claims that, though counter-intuitive, happiness should be classified as a disease and so included in diagnostic manuals. Using the language of diagnosis he notes the behavioral components of this “disease” including joy, smiling, and being carefree. What is noteworthy in diagnosing for the disease of happiness is that one of the most reliable ways to diagnose is to ask the “patient,” just as one does in diagnosing a person who is depressed—a good indicator or at least one in current use is the patient says they are “happy” or “sad.”
It would be hard to diagnose someone as sad or depressed if they self-reported that they were not.
As expected Bentall’s proposal goes through the usual criteria including epidemiological studies (rich score higher on being happy then the poor,) and genetic studies. Philosophers distinguish between behavior that might be worthy of psychiatric attention and behavior that is not by determining whether the behavior is rational. “There is consistent evidence that happy people overestimate their control over environmental event.” In sum, Bentall notes, “that happiness meets all reasonable criteria for a psychiatric disorder. It is statistically abnormal and consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms; there is at least some evidence that it reflects abnormal functioning of the central nervous system; and it is associated with various cognitive abnormalities—in particular a lack of contact with reality.” Bentall then recommends inclusion in the DSM the name “Major Affective Disorder, Pleasant Type.”
Where it gets interesting apropos of sophist_monster posting is when Bentall notes the objections to this. One of them of course would be that happiness doesn’t normally come under “therapeutic concern”—but this objection would then rest on the fact that the naming of diseases (which is to do something) are culturally and historically relative phenomena. “On this account, sickle-cell anemia, anorexia nervosa, and psychopathy were not diseases before their discovery.”
The second objection is that happiness is not normally negatively valued; but implicit in this objection is that value judgments (persuasion) “should determine our approach to psychiatric classification.” In sum Bentall is making the claim of rhetoric and the strong defense—that subjective values are the basis of such scientific systems of classification.
*The title of the post comes directly from a Harper's Magazine story on the Bentall article.
Sophist_Monster concludes:
The historian thus argues that these are not simply questions of science but are also and always moral questions as well. I would sum this up by arguing that the question is not simply/only "Is homosexuality a mental illness?" The questions is/should be "What are the consequences of asking whether homosexuality is or is not a mental illness?" "Should we ask such a question at all?" That is (what) the debate (should be) about because the rest, the science, is entelechy, so to speak. We should not use, in the words of the interviewed historian, "the rod of science to beat back those we don't agree with." Because it is about agreement, an admission few seem willing to make, we have to be able to confront sources of disagreement and do so "honestly." Science alone cannot claim to settle questions of the good life because science itself already takes place in context made possible by previous decisions, previous values. If we stop at the "scientific" we miss the complexity of any and all other debates.To this focus and conclusion I would add in support the following (liberally borrowed from “A Proposal to Classify Happiness as a Psychiatric Disorder,” by Richard P. Bentall, in the June 1992 issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, published in London. Bentall then was a senior lecturer in clinical psychology at Liverpool University):
Spare the rod: save the argument.
Bentall first claims that, though counter-intuitive, happiness should be classified as a disease and so included in diagnostic manuals. Using the language of diagnosis he notes the behavioral components of this “disease” including joy, smiling, and being carefree. What is noteworthy in diagnosing for the disease of happiness is that one of the most reliable ways to diagnose is to ask the “patient,” just as one does in diagnosing a person who is depressed—a good indicator or at least one in current use is the patient says they are “happy” or “sad.”
It would be hard to diagnose someone as sad or depressed if they self-reported that they were not.As expected Bentall’s proposal goes through the usual criteria including epidemiological studies (rich score higher on being happy then the poor,) and genetic studies. Philosophers distinguish between behavior that might be worthy of psychiatric attention and behavior that is not by determining whether the behavior is rational. “There is consistent evidence that happy people overestimate their control over environmental event.” In sum, Bentall notes, “that happiness meets all reasonable criteria for a psychiatric disorder. It is statistically abnormal and consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms; there is at least some evidence that it reflects abnormal functioning of the central nervous system; and it is associated with various cognitive abnormalities—in particular a lack of contact with reality.” Bentall then recommends inclusion in the DSM the name “Major Affective Disorder, Pleasant Type.”
Where it gets interesting apropos of sophist_monster posting is when Bentall notes the objections to this. One of them of course would be that happiness doesn’t normally come under “therapeutic concern”—but this objection would then rest on the fact that the naming of diseases (which is to do something) are culturally and historically relative phenomena. “On this account, sickle-cell anemia, anorexia nervosa, and psychopathy were not diseases before their discovery.”
The second objection is that happiness is not normally negatively valued; but implicit in this objection is that value judgments (persuasion) “should determine our approach to psychiatric classification.” In sum Bentall is making the claim of rhetoric and the strong defense—that subjective values are the basis of such scientific systems of classification.
*The title of the post comes directly from a Harper's Magazine story on the Bentall article.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Pharmakonology
Let me start by saying that I have argued the following since my introductory psychology class ten years ago, I continued to argue the following as a psychology major, and I continue to argue the following within the context of rhetorical theory (and in pragmatics):Though recurring tummy aches from irritable bowel syndrome are among patients' most common complaints, drugmakers have had trouble coming up with a safe and effective treatment. But in 2008 Harvard's Ted J. Kaptchuk devised a safe remedy that helps far more people than any designer drug ever did.This according to a recent Forbes.com story entitled "For Nothing."
His magic cure: fake acupuncture delivered with lots of warm talk from a sympathetic acupuncturist--but no needles. In a trial of 262 patients with severe IBS, 62% of those who received the fake treatment got better, according to results published in the British Medical Journal. By comparison, only 28% of a control group of patients put on a waiting list saw their symptoms improve markedly. A third group who got the fake acupuncture, but without any warm talk, showed in-between results: 44% improved.
Save this kind of research, I never quite understood why the placebo effect was so routinely dismissed by medicine. It is producing a "real" effect, but because it was not producing a "real" physical effect it was not treated as real, or, as one astute commenter to the story writes, it is treated as "noise."
However, my major problem is that traditionally any results generated by placebos is treated as noise in the experiment. It's a good control, in that it accounts for the role of the action of being treated as a separate variable from actually being treated. Therefore looking for meaning in placebos strikes me as a sort of data mining.While there are certainly concerns about doctors misleading patients, these concerns privilege a certain kind of reality. If the pill works, then to what extent are doctor's "lying." In fact, many of the negative responses to this story expressed this discomfort with doctors "lying" to patients. (I kind of have Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" in mind here. "Lie" and "deception" assume a reality I am uncomfortable with. I am also thinking about a collaborative project I am working on with a psychologists in Holland: we are investigating "manipulation" and "deception" as social technologies.)
This is not to say that placebos always work or work equally well for everyone, but in this regard they are like any other pill. What is to stop a doctor from lying about any and all treatments? When it comes to ethical medical practices we must rely on the profession and external auditors to review and promote agreed upon ethical practices. Again, such an arrangement is what we always already rely on. A doctor wouldn't (or could just as easily and dangerously) prescribe Tylenol to treat a brain tumor. So fears about placebos in this direction seem unfounded (or at least no different from common concerns about medical treatments and professional ethics).
I think one place the fear comes from (yes, here it comes) is a particular orientation to the real as only the biological/the natural. I have posted on this issue previously here and here. The placebo threatens this biological foundationalism that has been at work in Western thought for a few thousand years. For instance, I think this distrust of the placebo effect can be traced to Plato's treatment of rhetoric as cosmetic (rather than real health, which comes from medicine). In other words, I read into the mistrust of placebo a mistrust of rhetoric.
I hear both then in the following comments on this story as posted to BoingBoing:
- There are massive ethical issues with doctors giving something to a patient, knowing that there is no active ingredient, and lying to make them feel better. I wouldn't want my doctor doing that to me!
- The placebo is, regardless of the intent, a lie. Using placebos as a therapy could endanger the trust in their doctor or doctors in general. This trust is crucial, however, to the function of a doctor. [the irony of arguing that trust is crucial is not lost on me: how could trust possible matter if its is the real cure you are after?]
- There is a real and distasteful paternalism in lying to your patients to make them happy and leave your office.
Update: Here is another story on the placebo effect.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Spare the Rod (Really)
Prologue
I have been meaning to post on an amazing This American Life story as it relates to one of my favorite intellectual intersections: rhetoric and science, which means it is also about everything. As W.H. reminds us:
reveals much about the relationship between politics and science (and much about what we want from that relationship and what we don't).
Introduction: Stigma
The report begins with a necessary discounting (which is not a defense) of the presence of homosexuality in the DSM. While it's definition and categorization later proved just as harmful, several of the psychiatrist who defended its place in the DSM argued that it was a defense from harmful stigmas, namely religious stigmas that made homosexuality a sin. Better an illness, they assumed, than a sin. What is unusual is that some of those who wanted to keep "homosexuality" in the DSM did so for ostensibly "progressive" reasons, which we can no doubt question now. Even at this stage, the story is a complex one.
Part One: Science "Becomes" Politics
What is immediately clear from the story ("81 Words") is that labels are never passive nor innocent. Language, Kenneth Burke reminds us, is symbolic action; it is not about labeling but about projecting, about doing something in and to the world. Thus, labeling homosexuality a "mental illness" is an action that will have results (it will cause effects), and claiming that one is merely labeling something is no defense against liability for what that label does. So here we have our first intersection of science and politics (I am assuming the intersection itself is rhetoric): to label something never happens in a vacuum away from politics. The label itself works politically (even if it is not "politically motivated" -- although in this case all the motives can be seen as political, which makes this story a good case study for all such stories).
Part Two: Politics Motivates Science
Moving in the other direction, we can see not only how the labels of science work politically, but how any scientific endeavor to label, to discover, to know, is necessarily (a priori) motivated. At the most basic level, the argument goes, a scientist chooses (has to choose) the question she wants to ask after choosing the phenomenon she wants to investigate. In this case, investigating homosexuality in the terms of "mental illness" is already a political act, just as not investigating it in terms of mental illness is a political act.
This is not to argue that all motivations are equal, that just because we can understand both as motivated that both are equally "good" or equally "true." What I am building to (in terms of rhetoric) is that neither are outside of having to make arguments for themselves. Rather than moving away from prejudice (i.e., to deny prejudice), we must make arguments for our prejudices above and beyond other prejudices and do so not just on the basis of accuracy but on the basis of effects -- not whether "true" but rather conducive to "desired effects."
Conclusion: "The Earth is Round"
Problematically (even while I agree with the sentiment of celebration), when the DSM was changed -- when homosexuality ceased to be a disease -- one headline read "The Earth is Round." This is problematic because it assumes some "Truth" had been discovered rather than that an argument had been successful. To wrap both of these threads up, then, I move to the end of the "81 Words" report, which includes an interview with an historian. This historian points out that both sides of the debate (inclusion/exclusion of homosexuality from the DSM) claimed that the other side was politicizing science, and that both insisted that other side was being unscientific. This should come as no surprise: the oldest trick in the book of rhetoric is to claim it is the other side that uses rhetoric while you are simply telling it as it is. The historian argues that this is the nature of such controversies. And I would argue that it is such behavior that plagues such controversies, as both sides move to belie rather than confront questions of value and politics in science.
The historian thus argues that these are not simply questions of science but are also and always moral questions as well. I would sum this up by arguing that the question is not simply/only "Is homosexuality a mental illness?" The questions is/should be "What are the consequences of asking whether homosexuality is or is not a mental illness?" "Should we ask such a question at all?" That is (what) the debate (should be) about because the rest, the science, is entelechy, so to speak. We should not use, in the words of the interviewed historian, "the rod of science to beat back those we don't agree with." Because it is about agreement, an admission few seem willing to make, we have to be able to confront sources of disagreement and do so "honestly." Science alone cannot claim to settle questions of the good life because science itself already takes place in context made possible by previous decisions, previous values. If we stop at the "scientific" we miss the complexity of any and all other debates.
Spare the rod: save the argument.
Update: I would apply Wayne Booth's label (get it) of motivism here. Booth understood motivism to be an inability to reason about values. I hope this label moves readers accordingly.
I have been meaning to post on an amazing This American Life story as it relates to one of my favorite intellectual intersections: rhetoric and science, which means it is also about everything. As W.H. reminds us:
Science, like Art, is fun, a playing with truths, and no gameLooking back forty years at the struggle to change the DSM entry for homosexuality (it's very presence in the manual - and thus its status as a mental illness - was itself debated)
should ever pretend to slay the heavy-lidded riddle,
What is the Good Life?
reveals much about the relationship between politics and science (and much about what we want from that relationship and what we don't).Introduction: Stigma
The report begins with a necessary discounting (which is not a defense) of the presence of homosexuality in the DSM. While it's definition and categorization later proved just as harmful, several of the psychiatrist who defended its place in the DSM argued that it was a defense from harmful stigmas, namely religious stigmas that made homosexuality a sin. Better an illness, they assumed, than a sin. What is unusual is that some of those who wanted to keep "homosexuality" in the DSM did so for ostensibly "progressive" reasons, which we can no doubt question now. Even at this stage, the story is a complex one.
Part One: Science "Becomes" Politics
What is immediately clear from the story ("81 Words") is that labels are never passive nor innocent. Language, Kenneth Burke reminds us, is symbolic action; it is not about labeling but about projecting, about doing something in and to the world. Thus, labeling homosexuality a "mental illness" is an action that will have results (it will cause effects), and claiming that one is merely labeling something is no defense against liability for what that label does. So here we have our first intersection of science and politics (I am assuming the intersection itself is rhetoric): to label something never happens in a vacuum away from politics. The label itself works politically (even if it is not "politically motivated" -- although in this case all the motives can be seen as political, which makes this story a good case study for all such stories).
Part Two: Politics Motivates Science
Moving in the other direction, we can see not only how the labels of science work politically, but how any scientific endeavor to label, to discover, to know, is necessarily (a priori) motivated. At the most basic level, the argument goes, a scientist chooses (has to choose) the question she wants to ask after choosing the phenomenon she wants to investigate. In this case, investigating homosexuality in the terms of "mental illness" is already a political act, just as not investigating it in terms of mental illness is a political act.
This is not to argue that all motivations are equal, that just because we can understand both as motivated that both are equally "good" or equally "true." What I am building to (in terms of rhetoric) is that neither are outside of having to make arguments for themselves. Rather than moving away from prejudice (i.e., to deny prejudice), we must make arguments for our prejudices above and beyond other prejudices and do so not just on the basis of accuracy but on the basis of effects -- not whether "true" but rather conducive to "desired effects."
Conclusion: "The Earth is Round"
Problematically (even while I agree with the sentiment of celebration), when the DSM was changed -- when homosexuality ceased to be a disease -- one headline read "The Earth is Round." This is problematic because it assumes some "Truth" had been discovered rather than that an argument had been successful. To wrap both of these threads up, then, I move to the end of the "81 Words" report, which includes an interview with an historian. This historian points out that both sides of the debate (inclusion/exclusion of homosexuality from the DSM) claimed that the other side was politicizing science, and that both insisted that other side was being unscientific. This should come as no surprise: the oldest trick in the book of rhetoric is to claim it is the other side that uses rhetoric while you are simply telling it as it is. The historian argues that this is the nature of such controversies. And I would argue that it is such behavior that plagues such controversies, as both sides move to belie rather than confront questions of value and politics in science.
The historian thus argues that these are not simply questions of science but are also and always moral questions as well. I would sum this up by arguing that the question is not simply/only "Is homosexuality a mental illness?" The questions is/should be "What are the consequences of asking whether homosexuality is or is not a mental illness?" "Should we ask such a question at all?" That is (what) the debate (should be) about because the rest, the science, is entelechy, so to speak. We should not use, in the words of the interviewed historian, "the rod of science to beat back those we don't agree with." Because it is about agreement, an admission few seem willing to make, we have to be able to confront sources of disagreement and do so "honestly." Science alone cannot claim to settle questions of the good life because science itself already takes place in context made possible by previous decisions, previous values. If we stop at the "scientific" we miss the complexity of any and all other debates.
Spare the rod: save the argument.
Update: I would apply Wayne Booth's label (get it) of motivism here. Booth understood motivism to be an inability to reason about values. I hope this label moves readers accordingly.
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