On naturalism and consciousness

[Surgenator]

. If your getting a set of biased data, your results will be biased as well.

I'm tempted to say here 'so what?"

Because it will (most likely) give you the WRONG answer.

I'll lower the tone and bring into the discussion ideas put forward by a lady often described by the academics as 'Not a real philosopher" Although I find most of Ayn Rand's politics odious I suggest her epistemology worthy of consideration in this context.
Take for instance this passage from Ronald E Merrill's "The Ideas of Ayn Rand" (Publ' Open Court1991)
" . . . . . .This nominalist/conceptualist or Humpty-Dumpty school of thought holds that definitions need only be consistently maintained during a particular discussion. Just as Americans drive on the right of the road, and the British on the left, a concept such as 'bird' may be defined as a feathered animal, or as an egg laying animal As long as everyone who is using the definition (or road) agrees to accept a particular procedure, the exact proceedure is of no importance.
Opposed to this is the 'realist' school of thought, in it's pure Platonic or diluted Aristotelian variants, which hold that there is only one correct definition of a given concept. What, though could give this 'essence' of he concept its specula validity? The 'essence' is real in this view - it actually exists, as a Platonic form or some such entity,
Rand rejects both these approaches. As she describes it, the nominalist regards definitions as arbitrary; there is no 'essence' of a concept. The realist postulates the actual existence of the essence; the essence is metaphysical. For Rand, definitions are not arbitrary - there is an essence- but the essence in not metaphysical but epistemological. Though concepts are in the mind, they are not arbitrary because they reflect reality, which is objective.
Now why should anyone bother with all this? Rand's answer would be that philosophy is practical. The nominalist view assumes that thinking is a matter of detached, abstract debate. It is a game, and the only requirement for the rules is that they be self-consistent and agreed by all the players.
But for Rand, thinking is man's means of survival, and it's rules are absolutely critical. If you pick the wrong way to define a concept, it may not just be "Well, that's an interesting way to look at the subject', it could kill you.

I'm not sure how the rest follows, but ok. I wouldn't completely agree with Ayn Rand on the last paragraph. It seems unnecessarily extreme.