There's 2 concepts that are getting mixed up here.
First is that science doesn't have an agenda, or shouldn't have an agenda. It doesn't start out trying to arrive at a certain position, it takes observations and seeks to explain them. This is an overall goal of science in general.
However in order to do that, individual scientists need to make leaps, you propose a hypothesis which makes some kind of assumptions (which COULD be bias one way) and you seek to then provide evidence for that hypothesis.
The difference is that if a hypothesis is bad and doesn't fit observation then the hypothesis has to either be dropped or modified. So there can be bias around individual scientist's hypothesis to explain natural behaviour, but it doesn't mean it becomes accepted in the scientific community.
I guess you could say the direction of science is influenced by the individuals that contribute, because if lots of people all work on one problem then that problem get solved faster, but it doesn't concern the validity of the results.
First is that science doesn't have an agenda, or shouldn't have an agenda. It doesn't start out trying to arrive at a certain position, it takes observations and seeks to explain them. This is an overall goal of science in general.
However in order to do that, individual scientists need to make leaps, you propose a hypothesis which makes some kind of assumptions (which COULD be bias one way) and you seek to then provide evidence for that hypothesis.
The difference is that if a hypothesis is bad and doesn't fit observation then the hypothesis has to either be dropped or modified. So there can be bias around individual scientist's hypothesis to explain natural behaviour, but it doesn't mean it becomes accepted in the scientific community.
I guess you could say the direction of science is influenced by the individuals that contribute, because if lots of people all work on one problem then that problem get solved faster, but it doesn't concern the validity of the results.
