I like to treat religious people nice.

[emjay]

We favor the scientific method but that is in itself an emotional bias. We don't embrace it because we are smart but because it appeals to us emotionally.

I disagree. It's not that I 'emotionally' like the truth... I don't emotionally like the idea, for example, that my dead loved ones are just plain dead, and not in some afterlife. I simply embrace science because it is true, whether I emotionally like it or not.

Sure, we may not be totally objective, but that doesn't mean there isn't a spectrum of how objectively correct people's beliefs can be. It's not an emotional bias to favor the scientific method at all: it's a detachment from emotional decision making.

I agree that we shouldn't be mean to religious people: there's no point. But that doesn't make them somehow right, or their views worth respecting. I'll tolerate religious views, but respect of an belief doesn't come that cheap.

The way I look at this is that science progresses in spite of human bias rather than in the absence of it. For instance any major paradigm shift in scientific thinking often takes a while for everyone to get on board... some people more than others cling more strongly to the old ideas... for instance with quantum physics. But the transparency of the scientific process to criticism from outside parties, some of which with different biases... means that it is self-correcting in the long run; eventually the weight of evidence is overwhelming enough to overcome all bias against it and thus the paradigm shift is complete.

I don't think any self-respecting scientist, who values objectivity, would willfully introduce bias into their experiments... and would do as much as they could to eliminate it... and likewise be open to outside criticism with the same aim... but nonetheless, where emotion goes, bias often follows, so wherever there is emotional investment in something... in this case with scientists in their theories... bias can seep in. Not necessarily into the experiments themselves, but into the directions research follows... which can be a good or bad thing... and in how readily, or not, alternative ideas are accepted.

So at the end of the day, my view is that bias is not something to ignore as irrelevant to science... because it is relevant; science is conducted by individual humans, and humans are inherently emotional as well as logical... but rather just something to aim to be aware of and constantly vigilant against.