Biased

by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

I have a different perspective. It’s not that social scientists are too fast to act; we are too slow. There is so much concern over the prospect of acting before we know enough about a phenomenon that we never get around to taking action. And because the scientific enterprise is iterative, we never seem to get to the point where we think we know enough. Social scientists fret so much about the purity and precision of science that we rarely throw ourselves into the messy problems of the world. From my perspective, engaging in the world, tackling thorny problems, can open the way to scientific discovery. If we don’t know enough as scientists to shed light on a problem, sometimes it is because we simply aren’t close enough to it.