I N P R A I S E OF I N T O L E R A N C E T O

CHARLATANISM I N ACADEMIA“

MARIO BUNGE
Foundations and Philosophy of Science Unil
McGill University
Montrkal, Canada H 3 A 1W7

U
P UNTIL T H E M I D - 1 9 6 0 s whoever wished to engage in mysti-
cism or freewheeling, intellectual deceit or antiintellectualism had to
do so outside the hallowed groves of academe. For nearly two cen-
turies before that time the university had been an institution of higher
learning, where people cultivated the intellect, engaged in rational discus-
sion, searched for the truth, applied it, or taught it to the best of their abilities.
To be sure once in a while a traitor to one of these values was discovered, but
he was promptly ostracized. And here and there a professor, once tenured,
refused to learn anything new and thus became quickly obsolete. But he
seldom lagged more than a couple of decades, was still able to engage in ra-
tional argument as well as to distinguish genuine knowledge from bunk, and
did not proclaim the superiority of guts over brains or of instinct over reason-
unless, of course, he happened to be an irrationalist philosopher.
This is no longer the case. Over the past three decades or so very many
universities have been infiltrated, though not yet seized, by the enemies of
learning, rigor, and empirical evidence: those who proclaim that there is no
objective truth, whence “anything goes,” those who pass off political opinion
as science and engage in bogus scholarship. These are not unorthodox orig-
inal thinkers; they ignore or even scorn rigorous thinking and experimenting
altogether. Nor are they misunderstood Galileos punished by the powers that
be for proposing daring new truths or methods. On the contrary, nowadays
many intellectual slobs and frauds have been given tenured jobs, are allowed
to teach garbage in the name of academic freedom, and see their obnoxious
writings published by scholarly journals and university presses. Moreover,
many of them have acquired enough power to censor genuine scholarship.
They have mounted a Trojan horse inside the academic citadel with the inten-
tion of destroying higher culture from within.

a The research leading to this paper was supported in part by the Humanities and
Social Sciences Research Council of Canada. Some paragraphs of this paper have been
taken from M . Bunge, Finding Philosophy in Social Science and Social Science under
Debate.
96
Charlatanism in Academia BUNGE 97

The academic enemies of the very raison d’Ctre of the university can be
grouped into two bands: the antiscientists, who often call themselves “post-
modernists,” and the pseudoscientists. The former teach that there are no ob-
jective and universal truths, whereas the academic pseudoscientists smuggle
fuzzy concepts, wild conjectures, or even ideology as scientific findings. Both
gangs operate under the protection of academic freedom, and often at the
taxpayer’s expense, too. Should they continue to use these privileges, mis-
leading countless students and misusing public funds in defaming the search
for truth, or should they be expelled from the temple of higher learning? This
is the main problem to be tackled in the present paper. But first let us sample
the production of the academic antiscientists and pseudoscientists, restricting
ourselves to the humanities and social studies.

ACADEMIC ANTISCIENCE
Academic antiscience is part of the counterculture movement. It can be
found in nearly all departments of any contemporary faculty of arts, partic-
ularly in the advanced countries. Let us take a look at a small sample of the
antiscientific reaction inside the gates of Academia: existentialism, phenom-
enology, phenomenological sociology, ethnomethodology, and radical femi-
nist theory.

Example 1: Existentialism
Existentialism is a jumble of nonsense, falsity, and platitude. Let the reader
judge by himself from the following sample of Heidegger’s celebrated Sein
und Zeit, dedicated to Edmund Husserl, his teacher and the founder of phe-
nomenology. On human existence or being-there (Dasein): “Das Sein des
Daseins besagt: Sich-vorweg-schon-sein-in-(der Welt-)als Sein-bei(innerweltlich
begegnendem Seienden).” On time: “Zeit ist urspriinglich als Zeitigung der
Zeitlichkeit, als welche sie die Konstitution der Sorgestruktur ermoglicht.”2
I dare anyone to make sense of these wordplays, or even to translate them
into standard German. Other famous formulas of Heidegger’s, such as Die
Welt weltet (“The world worlds”), Das Nichts nicbtet (“Nothingness noth-
ings”), Die Spracbe spricht (“Language speaks”), and Die Werte gelten
(“Values are valuable”), have the virtue of brevity but are just as nonsensical
as the former.
Not content with writing nonsense and torturing the German language,
Heidegger heaped scorn on “mere science” for being allegedly incapable of
“awakening the spirit.”3 He also denigrated logic, “an invention of school-
teachers, not of philosophers.”* Last, but not least, Heidegger was a Nazi
ideologist and militant, and remained unrepentant until the end.5 (No mere
coincidence here: the training of obedient soldiers ready to die for an insane
criminal cause starts by discouraging clear critical thinking.) In short, existen-
tialism is no ordinary garbage: it is unrecyclable rubbish. Its study in academic
courses is justified only as an illustration of, and warning against, irrational-
ism, academic imposture, gobbledygook, and subservience to reactionary
ideology.
98 ANNA Ls New York Academy of Sciences

Example 2: Phenomenology
This school, the parent of existentialism, is characterized by opaqueness.
Let the reader judge from this sample of its founder’s celebrated attack upon
the exact and natural sciences: “I as primaeval I [Ur-lch] construct [konsti-
tuire] my horizon of transcendental others as cosubjects of the transcendental
intersubjectivity that constructs the world.”6 Phenomenology is also a mod-
ern paragon of subjectivism. In fact, according to its founder the gist of phe-
nomenology is that it is a “pure egology,” a “science of the concrete transcen-
dental s~bjectivity.”~ As such, it is “in utmost opposition to the sciences as
they have been conceived up until now, i.e., as objective sciences.”s The very
first move of the phenomenologist is the “phenomenological reduction” or
“bracketing out” (dpochd) of the external world. “One must lose the world
through e‘pochk in order to regain it through universal self-examination.”9 He
must do this because his “universal task” is the discovery of himself as tran-
scendental (i.e., nonempirical) ego. lo
Having feigned that real things such as chairs and colleagues d o not exist,
the phenomenologist proceeds to uncover their essences. To this end he
makes use of a special intuition called “vision of essences” (Wesensschau),the
nature of which is not explained, and for which no evidence at all is offered.
The result is an a priori and intuitive science.” This “science” proves to be
nothing but transcendental idealism. This subjectivism is not only episte-
mological but also ontological: “the world itself is an infinite idea.”Ij
How could anyone think that this wild fantasy could shed any light on any-
thing except the decadence of German philosophy? This extravagance can
only have at least one of two negative effects on social studies. One is to focus
on individual behavior and deny the real existence of social systems and
macrosocial facts; these would be the products of such intellectual procedures
as aggregation and “interpretation” (guessing). The other possible negative ef-
fect is to alienate students from empirical research, thus turning the clock
back to the times of armchair (“humanistic”) social studies. The effect of the
former move is that social science is impossible; that of the second is that so-
cial science is impossible. Either or both of these effects are apparent in the
two schools to be examined next.

Example 3: Phenomenological Sociologyl4

This school is characterized by spiritualism and subjectivism, as well as by
individualism (both ontological and methodological) and conservatism-
ethical and political. The first two features are obvious: according to phenome-
nology social reality is a construction of the knower, not a given; for all social
facts would be “meaningful” (have a purpose) and the subject of “interpreta-
tion” (guessing), whence everything social would be spiritual and subjective,
or at most intersubjective, rather than material and observer independent. The
ontological individualism of phenomenology derives from its subjectivism.
Because individuals are said to “interpret” themselves and others, without ever
facing any brute social facts, the task of the sociologist is to grasp “subjective
meaning structures” rather than to construct or test models of social systems
or processes. In particular, he must study the Lebenswelt or everyday life of
Charlatanism in Academia BUNGE 99

individuals, skirting such macrosocial issues as gender and race discrimina-

tion, mass unemployment, social conflict, and war. The phenomenological
sociologist claims to grasp directly the objects of his study, alleging that they
are ordinary. Moreover, let us remember that he is graced with the “vision of
essences,” which gives him instant insight. Hence he can dispense with statis-
tics, mathematical modeling, tedious argument, and empirical test. In short,
phenomenological sociology is avowedly nonscientific and an invitation to
sloth.

Example 4: Ethnomethodology‘5
This is the offspring of the union of phenomenology with symbolic inter-
actionism. The members of this school practice what phenomenological so-
ciologists preach: they observe at first hand and record trivial events in the
Lebenswelt or everyday life, focus on symbols and communication, and skirt
any important activities, processes, and issues, particularly large-scale social
conflicts and changes. They engage in participant (short-range) observation
but shun experimentation, which they disapprove of on philosophical
grounds. Lacking theories of their own, the ethnomethodologists invoke the
murky pronouncements of hermeneutics, phenomenology, and even existen-
tialism-all of them declared enemies of science. Obviously an antiscientific
philosophy that opposes the search for objective truth could hardly inspire
scientific research. Mercifully the ethnomethodologists make no use of these
doctrines in their empirical work. As a matter of fact, in field work they behave
as positivists-even while vehemently denouncing positivism-inasmuch as
they spend most of their time collecting data, which they are unable to inter-
pret correctly for want of theory.
In fact, the ethnomethodologist audiotapes and videotapes “the detailed
and observable practices which make the incarnate [?] production of ordinary
social facts, for example, order of service in a queue, sequential order in a con-
versation, and the order of skillfully embodied [?] improvised conduct.”1G
Possible English translation: “The ethnomethodologists record observable or-
dinary life events.” The data thus collected are audible or visible traces left
by people who presumably behave purposefully and intelligently. These
traces are the only clues the ethnomethodologists can go by, for, lacking a
theory, they cannot tell us what makes people tick-i.e., they cannot explain
the behavior they observe and record. Their practice does not differ from that
of the empiricist and, in particular, the behaviorist-as even Atkinson, a sym-
pathizer of the school, has admitted. ‘7 In short, they behave like positivists
even while engaging in positivism bashing-actually a devious way of at-
tacking the scientific approach.
Only the ethnomethodologists’ convoluted lingo suggests intimate contact
with their philosophical mentors. For example, Garfinkel starts one of his
books by stating that ethnomethodology “recommends” that “the activities
whereby members [of a group?]produce and manage settings [?] of organized
everyday affairs are identical with members’ procedures for making those set-
tings ‘account-able’[?]. The ‘reflexive’[?] or ‘incarnate’[?] character of ac-
counting [?I practices and accounts makes up the crux of that recommen-
100 A N N A LS New York Academy of Sciences

dation.”’8 Or consider the same author’s definition of ethnomethodology

as “the investigation of the rational [intelligible?] properties of indexical
[context-dependent] expressions and other practical actions as contingent [?]
ongoing accomplishments [outcomes?]of organized artful [purposive?]prac-
tices of everyday life.”“ Why use extraordinary prose to describe ordinary ac-
counts of ordinary life?
This is not to deny the value of observing everyday life occurrences, such as
casual encounters and conversations-the favorite material of ethnomethod-
ologists. Such observation, a common practice of anthropologists, yields raw
material for the scientist to process in the light of hypotheses and with a view
to coming up with new hypotheses. But that empirical material is of limited
use unless it is accompanied by reliable information concerning the role that
the observed subject enacts, e.g., boss or employee. The reason is that such
roles-in other words, the system in which the protagonists are embedded-
largely determine the “meaning” (purpose) of everyday actions and the con-
tent of conversations.*o But ethnomethodologists overlook the macrosocial
context and are not interested in any large social issues. This fact, combined
with the absence of tests of the proposed “interpretations” (hypotheses) and
the lack of theory, explains the paucity of findings of ethnomethodology.
A characteristic product of this school is Lynch’s study “Sacrifice and the
Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object: Laboratory Culture
and Ritual Practice in the Neurosciences.” Taking his cue from Durkheim’s
studies in the sociology of religion, Lynch claims that the killing of laboratory
animals at the end of a run of experiments is part of a ritual practice whereby
the body of the animal is transformed into “a bearer of transcendental signifi-
cances.” Characteristically, he presents no evidence for the extraordinary
claim that the laboratory bench is just a sacrifice altar.

Example 5: Radical Feminist Theory

The word “feminism” nowadays denotes three very different objects: the
movement for women’s emancipation from male domination; the scientific
study of the feminine biological, psychological, and social condition; and radi-
cal feminist “theory.” While the first two are legitimate and laudable endeav-
ors, the third is an academic industry that makes no use of science. It is, more-
over, hostile to science and is characterized by pseudoproblems and wild
speculation. Some radical feminist theorists have promised a “successor
science” that would eventually replace or at least corrlplement what they call
“male-dominated science.” Others, more consistent, are dead against all
science, because they believe that reason and experiment are weapons of male
domination. They hold that the scientific method is part of the “male-stream.’’
They denounce precision-in particular, quantitation, rational argument, the
search for empirical data, and the empirical testing of hypotheses as so many
tools of male domination. They are constructivist-relativists: they denounce
what they call ”the myth of objectivity.” (More on this below under ACADEMIC
PSEUDOSCIENCE.)
For example, the feminist theorists Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and
Tarule hold that truth is context dependent and that “the knower is an inti-
Charlatanism in Academia B U N G E 101

mate part of the known”-just because some of the women they interviewed
felt so.21Sandra Harding goes as far as to assert that it would be “illuminating
and honest” to call Newton’s laws of motion “Newton’s rape manual.”22(The
rape victim would be Mother Nature, which of course is feminine.) Moreover,
basic science would be indistinguishable from technology, and the search for
scientific knowledge would be just a disguise for the struggle for power-as
Herbert Marcuse23and Michel Foucault2*had claimed earlier o n the strength
of the same empirical evidence, namely none. The radical feminist philoso-
phers are interested in power, not in truth. They want to undermine science,
not to advance it. In this way they d o a double disservice to the cause of femi-
nine emancipation: they discredit feminism by making it appear to be bar-
baric, and they deprive it of a strong lever-namely the scientific research of
the spurious causes and the pernicious effects of gender discrimination. More-
over, their attack on science alienates women from scientific studies and thus
reinforces their subordinate position in modern society.25
To sum up, our antiscience colleagues are characterized by their appalling
ignorance of the very object of their attack, namely scienwZ6Lacking intel-
lectual discipline and rigor, they have been utterly barren. This has not pre-
vented them from misleading countless students, encouraging them to choose
the wide door, incapacitating them to think straight and get their facts right,
and in many cases even write intelligibly.2’ Why should any serious and so-
cially responsible scholar tolerate barbarians intent on discrediting genuine
scholarly pursuits and even destroying modern culture?

ACADEMIC PSEUDOSCIENCE
To paraphrase Grouch0 Marx: the trademark of modern culture is science;
if you can fake this, you’ve got it made. Hence the drive to clothe groundless
speculations, and even old superstitions, with the gown of science. The popu-
lar pseudosciences, such as astrology, pyramidology, graphology, UFOlogy,
“scientific” creationism, parapsychology, and psychoanalysis, are easy to spot,
for they are obviously at variance with what is being taught at the science
faculties. (Psychoanalysis would seem to refute this assertion, but it does not.
Indeed, nowadays psychoanalysis is taught in only some psychiatry depart-
ments, which are part of medical schools, not of science faculties.) On the
other hand, the academic pseudosciences are harder to spot partly because
they are taught at university departments the world over. A second reason is
that these pseudosciences abide by reason, or at least seem at first sight to d o
so. Their main flaws are that their constructions are fuzzy and do not match
reality. (Some of them, such as neo-Austrian economics, even claim that their
theories are true a priori.) Let us take a small sample, restricting our discussion
to two trends: the love of spurious precision (in particular, pseudoquantifica-
tion) and the post-Mertonian sociology of science.

Example 1: Pseudomathematical Symbolism

Vilfredo Pareto, an original, insightful, and erudite student of society who
used mathematics in economics, passes for being one of the founders of mathe-
matical sociology merely because in this field he used some symbols other
102 ANNALS New York Academy of Sciences

than words. Thus, in his massive and famous Trattato di sociologia generale
Pareto listed a number of “residues” or “forces,” among them sentiments, abil-
ities, dispositions, and mythsz8He assumed tacitly that the “residues” are nu-
merical variables. But, since he failed to define them, the symbols he used are
mere abbreviations for intuitive notions. Unaware of this confusion between
arbitrary symbols and symbols designating mathematical concepts, he wrote
about the composition of such “f0rces.”~9Further down he introduced the
formula “q = A/B,” where A stands for “the force of class I residues,” and B
for “the force of class I1 residues” in a given social group or nation.3O
Roughly, q would be the ratio of progressivism to conservatism. Since Pareto
made no attempt to define any of these “magnitudes,” he had no right to di-
vide them or to assert that they increased or decreased quantitatively over
time in any group or nation. Ironically, earlier in the same work @. 509) he
had warned that “Residues correspond to certain instincts in human beings,
and for that reason they are usually wanting in definiteness, in exact delimi-
tation.”3I And even earlier in the same work he had devoted an entire chapter
to characterizing and criticizing pseudoscientific the0ries.3~Likewise Pitirim
Sorokin, one of the founders of American sociology and an early critic of
what he called “quantophrenia,” sometimes indulged in the latter.33 For ex-
ample, he defined the freedom of an individual as the quotient of the sum of
his wishes by the sum of his means for gratifying them.3* But since he did
not bother to define wishes and means in a mathematically correct way, he
“divided” words. In sum, the symbols he used in this case were mere short-
hand for intuitive notions.
Professor Samuel Huntington, the famous Harvard political scientist, was
far sloppier. In fact he proposed the following “equations” concerning the im-
pact of modernization in developing nations:
Social mobilization/Economic development = Social frustration,
Social frustrationlMobility opportunities = Political participation,
Political participation/Political institutionalization = Political instability.35
Huntington did not define any of these “variables,” he did not explain how
numerical values could be assigned to them, and he did not even bother to
tell us their dimensions and units. Obviously, he was unaware that he had
“divided” words, not numerical values of honest functions. This was pointed
out by the mathematician Neal Koblitz in a paper titled “Mathematics as
Propaganda,” which led Yale mathematician Serge Lang to campaign success-
fully against the induction of Professor Huntington into the United States
Academy of Sciences. Regrettably, many political scientists and sociologists de-
fended Huntington, thereby exhibiting their mathematical and methodologi-
cal naivete.36
Professor Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago, is fa-
mous for his economic approach to the study of human behavior. Unfortu-
nately he leans heavily on undefined utility functions and tends to pepper his
writings with symbols that do not always represent concepts. For example,
a key formula of his theory of social interactions reads thus: “R = DI + h.”3’
Here i labels an arbitrary individual, and R is supposed to stand for “the
Charlatanism in Academia 0UNGE 103

opinion of i held by other persons in the same occupation”; and “ h measures

the effect of i’s efforts, and Di the level of R when i makes no effort; that is,
Di measures i’s ‘social environment.’ ” Becker christens these “functions”
but does not specify them. Consequently he adds words, not functions. We
are not even told what the dimensions and units of these pseudomagnitudes
are. Therefore, we would not know how to measure the corresponding prop-
erties and so to test for the adequacy of the formula.
Of course, pseudoquantitation is sufficient but not necessary to engage in
pseudoscience. An alternative is to relate precise magnitudes in imprecise
ways, such as “Y is some function of X,” where X and Yare well defined but
the function is left unspecified. Milton Friedman’s “theoretical framework for
monetary analysis” is a case in p0int.3~Indeed, it revolves around three un-
defined function symbols (J g,and r). Hence it may at most pass for a research
proposal, an aim of which would be to find the precise form of the hopeful
functions in question. But the project does not seem to have been carried out.
And in any case, given the bankruptcy of monetarism, the project does not
seem worthy of being carried out.

Example 2: Subjective Probability

When confronted with a random or seemingly random process, one at-
tempts to build a probabilistic model that could be tested against empirical
data; no randomness, no probability. Moreover, as Poincari? pointed out long
ago, talk of probability involves some knowledge; it is no substitute for igno-
rance. This is not how the Bayesians or personalists view the matter: when
confronted with ignorance or uncertainty, they use probability-or rather
their own version of it. This allows them to assign prior probabilities to facts
and propositions in an arbitrary manner-which is a way of passing off mere
intuition, hunch, or guess for scientific hypothesis. In other words, in the
Bayesian perspective there is no question of objective randomness, random-
ization, random sample, statistical test, or even testability; it is all a game of
belief rather than knowledge.
This approach contrasts with science, where gut feelings and wild specu-
lations may be confided over coffee breaks but are not included in scientific
discourse, whereas (genuine) probabilities are measured (directly or indi-
rectly), and probabilistic models are checked experimentally. (Think of
models of radiative and radioactive decay, Brownian motion, gene mutation,
or random mating.) This is not to write off the scientific study of belief. Such
study is important; and, precisely for this reason, it belongs in experimental
psychology and sociology, and it should be conducted scientifically. There is
no reason to believe that probability theory, a chapter of pure mathematics,
is the ready-made (a priori) empirical theory of belief. In fact, there is reason
to believe that credences are not probabilities, if only because we seldom
know all the branches of any given decision t ~ e e . 3 ~
In the field of jurisprudence the so-called new evidence scholarship, born
in the mid-l960s, claims to use probability to measure credence and in par-
ticular the credibility of legal evidence. In this connection there is even talk
of “trial by mathematics.”40I submit that probability hardly belongs in legal
104 A N NA Ls New York Academy of Sciences

argument because probability measures only the likelihood of random events,

not the plausibility of a piece of evidence, the veracity of a witness, or the
likelihood that a court of law will produce the just verdict. Consequently, talk
of probability in law is pseudoscientific. Worse, the American and other crimi-
nal codes require the death penalty when “there is a probability that the de-
fendant would commit criminal acts of violence”-as if such a “probability”
(actually a mere plausibility) could be either measured or calculated. Thus
sometimes not only property and freedom but even life hang on epistemol-
ogies that would not stand a chance in science or engineering, and whose
only function is to justify an academic industry.

Example 3: Subjective Utility

Most of the utility “functions” occurring in neoclassical microeconomics
and its applications to other social studies are not well defined-as Henri Poin-
care pointed out to Leon Walras.4’ In fact, the only conditions required of
them is that they be twice differentiable, the first derivative being positive and
the second negative. Obviously, infinitely many functions satisfy these mild
requirements. This often suffices in some branches of pure mathematics. (Like-
wise the general theory of metric spaces does not require the specification
of the distance function.) But the factual (or empirical) sciences are more de-
manding: here one uses only functions that are defined explicitly (e.g., by in-
finite series or products) or implicitly (e.g., by differential equations together
with initial or boundary conditions). Such specification makes for definite
meaning, more exacting testability, and more rigorous measurement. Finally,
experimental studies have shown that preferences and subjective estimates of
utility and risk d o not satisfy the assumptions of expected utility theory.42
In short, the use of utility functions is often mathematically sloppy and em-
pirically unwarranted. Now, rational choice models make heavy use of both
subjective utilities and subjective probabilities, as well as of the simplistic hy-
pothesis that selfishness is the only motivation of human behavior. Not sur-
prisingly, none of these models fits the fact. Hence, although at first sight they
look scientific, as a matter of fact they are p s e u d o ~ c i e n t i f i c . ~ ~

Example 4: Loose Talk of Chaos Theory

James N. Rosenau, a well-known politologist, has claimed that political in-
stability and turbulence are similar to the instabilities and vortices of fluids,
and, moreover, that they satisfy chaos theory.44 However, he did not write,
let alone solve, any nonlinear differential or finite difference equation for po-
litical processes; all he did was some hand-waving. Another politologist,
Courtney Brown, does write some equations, but they happen t o concern two
key variables-level of public concern and environmental damage-that he
fails to define, so that the formulas are only ornamental.45
All of the above-mentioned examples are exercises in either shorthand or
mathematical name-dropping, not in genuine mathematical social science.
What we have here is some of the accoutrements of science without its sub-
stance; i c , we are in the presence of pseudoscience.
Charlatanism in Academia B u N G E 105

Example 5: Post-Mertonian Sociology of Science

The modern sociology of science is a scientific discipline born in the 1930s
around Robert K. M e r t ~ nIt. ~attempts
~ to investigate in a scientific way sci-
entific communities and the interactions between scientific research and so-
cial structure; and it holds the former to be realist, disinterested, critical, and
subject to a moral code. In the mid-1960s an irrationalist and idealist reaction
against the Merton school was
The pseudoscientific sociology of science, usually described as construc-
tivist-relativist, claims to paint a far more realistic image of scientific research
through jettisoning what are called the “myths” of disinterested research and
objective truth. However, most of the new-style sociologists of science mis-
trust or even attack science. They regard it as an ideology, a power tool, an
inscription-making device with no legitimate claim to universal truth, one
more social construction on a par with myths, dress codes, and a variety of
politicking. They regard scientists as skilled craftsmen but somewhat unscru-
pulous wheelers-dealers and unprincipled politicians. In short, they laugh at
Merton’s classical characterization of the scientific ethos.
The members of this school regard all facts, or at least what they call sci-
entific facts, as constructions, none as given. (Thus, the book that earned
Latour and Woolgar instant fame is titled Laboratory Life: The Social Con-
struction of Scientific Facts.)But actually in matters of knowledge the only
genuine social constructions are the exceedingly uncommon scientific forg-
eries committed by a team. A famous forgery of this kind was the Piltdown
fossil man, “discovered” by two pranksters in 1912, certified as authentic by
a number of experts (among them Father Teilhard de Chardin), and unmasked
as a fake only in 1950. According to the existence criterion of constructivism-
relativism we should admit that the Piltdown man did exist-at least between
1912 and 1950-just because the scientific community believed in it. Are we
prepared to believe this, or rather to suspect that the self-styled post-
Mertonians are incapable or even unwilling to tell hot air from cold fact?
Because the constructivist-relativists deny that there is any conceptual dif-
ference between science and other human endeavors, they feel entitled to pass
judgment on the content of science, not only o n its social context. Thus, after
reading one of Einstein’s popularizations of special relativity, Latour con-
cludes that the poor man was wrong in believing that it deals with “the elec-
trodynamics of moving bodies,” the title of the founding paper-one that
Latour could not possibly understand for lack of mathematical and physical
. ~ ~ theory, he reveals to us, is about long distance travelers.
c o m ~ e t e n c e The
Not only this: it renders everything physical relative to the knower (not to the
reference frame), thus confirming subjectivism-the misinterpretation pop-
ular among idealist philosophers at the beginning of this century. There is n o
telling what further wonders these modern day “Darwins of science”-as La-
tour calls himself and his friends49-may bring.
Because the constructivist-relativists ignore science, they are incapable of
distinguishing it from pseudoscience. Thus Michael Mulkay, a pioneer of the
movement, waxed indignant over the way the scientific community treated
Immanuel Velikovsky’sallegedly revolutionary Worlds in Collision of 1950.5O
106 ANNALS New York Academy Of Sciences

He scolded scientists for their “abusive and uncritical rejection” of

Velikovsky’s fantasies and for clinging to their “theoretical and methodolog-
ical paradigms”-among them the equations of celestial mechanics. He
claimed that the astronomers had the duty to put Velikovsky’sfantasies to the
test. Obviously Mulkay ignores that the burden of proof rests on the would-be
innovator, that nearly all of Velikovsky’sclaims have been proved wrong, and
that scientists have more important tasks than to test fantasies that collide
head-on with the bulk of scientific knowledge. However, a number of scien-
tists, headed by Carl Sagan, did take their time to criticize in detail Velikovsky’s
fantasies, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science de-
voted an entire symposium to them.5’
Other vocal constructivist-relativists have mounted spirited defenses of
astrology and parapsychology.52 They attack the critics of these pseudosci-
ences for espousing what they call “the standard model of science,” which
they dub “ideology.” Regrettably they do not propose an alternative “model”
of science. They only call for a “reappraisal of scientific method” to make
room for astrology, parapsychology, psychoanalysis, and other “extraordi-
nary sciences.”It would go against the grain of their school to propose its own
clear-cut criteria of scientificity, since it holds science to be an ordinary “so-
cial construction.” But how is it possible to discuss rationally the scientific
status of an idea or practice otherwise than in the light of some definition of
scientificity? As for the truth values of the alleged findings of astrologers, para-
psychologists, and the like, how can we discuss them in the constructivist-
relativist framework, where truth is said to be a social convention on a par
with table manners?53

Example 6: “Scientific” Racism

Racism is very old, but “scientific” racism is a 19th-century invention that
culminated with the Nazi Rassenkunde and the accompanying extermination
camps. The American version of this doctrine was introduced by some psy-
chologists on the basis of flawed IQ measurements, and it was entrenched in
the American legislation restricting immigration from Southern Europe and
other regi0ns.5~It was muted for a while in the wake of the revelation of the
Nazi horrors, but it was resuscitated in 1969 by the Harvard professor Arthur
Jensen, who, on the basis of some IQ measurements, asserted the innate in-
tellectual inferiority of Afroamericans. This “finding” was unanimously re-
jected by the scientific community. In particular the Genetics Society of
America warned against “the pitfalls of naive hereditarian assumptions.”55
Yaron Ezrahi, a member of the constructivist-relativist pseudosociology of
science, claimed that this denial was due to ideological reasons.56 He held
that the geneticists were particularly vehement in their criticisms of Jensen’s
work for being concerned, at least in part, with their own “public image and
support.” Ezrahi did not bother to analyze the very IQ tests from which Jensen
had derived his “conclusions.” Had he done so he might have learned that (a)
such tests were indeed culture bound and thus likely to favor whites over
blacks, and @) no IQ test will be fully reliable unless it is backed up by a well-
confirmed theory of intelligence-a theory that is overdue.57
Charlatanism in Academia B U N G E 107

Undaunted by such methodological criticisms, Richard Herrnstein and

Charles Murray repeated the racist claim in their best seller The Bell Curve
without adding any new evidence.58 Their book was promoted by the
American Enterprise Institute and widely publicized by right-wing journalists,
who saw in this book the “scientific” basis for their proposal to eliminate all
the social programs aimed at giving a chance to Afroamerican children and
youngsters. The idea is, of course, that no amount of money, particularly if
public, can correct for an allegedly genetic deficiency. This time around geneti-
cists and psychologists were slow to react: perhaps they took the book for
what it is, namely a political tract. On the other hand some journalists and
sociologists did point out the methodological flaws of the book, uncovered
its ideological sources, and denounced its implications for public policy.59

Example 7: Feminist Technology

Since technology is the art and science of getting things done, maintained,
and repaired, psychotherapy and jurisprudence should be regarded as tech-
nologies. Now, in recent years these technologies have acquired a sex: there
is now talk of feminist psychotherapy and feminist jurisprudence. Let us take
a quick look at the former. A forte of feminist psychotherapy is “recovered
memory therapy,” consisting in “enhancing” a woman’s memory-if neces-
sary, with the help of hypnosis and drugs-until she “remembers” having
been sexually abused by her father during childhood. The patient is then en-
couraged to take her father to court, in order to punish him and extract from
him the maximum possible monetary compensation-to be shared with the
therapist. This racket flourished during the past decade in the United States
until the American Medical Association and above all the False Memory Syn-
drome Foundation warned the courts of law that they were being taken in.
Thanks to this reaction the number of lawsuits of that type has started to de-
cline. This is not to deny that many children are sexually abused by their rela-
tives. What is objectionable is planting by the therapist of false memories into
her patient and the “theory” that underlies this practice: the former is un-
scrupulous, and the latter false. Indeed, the theory in question is psychoanaly-
sis, a pseudoscience according to which we never forget anything unless it is
repressed by the “superego.” This hypothesis is false: psychologists know that
memory is not photographic but selective, distorting, and constructive. They
also know that many people are suggestible,so that unscrupulous psychothera-
pists can successfully plant false memories in their brains.
To sum up, academic pseudoscience is just as toxic as academic antiscience.
Why should serious and socially responsible scholars tolerate it? Being a trav-
esty of scientific research, it should be dissected and exposed, taught only to
exemplify bogus science.6o

T W O K I N D S OF IGNORANCE: NATURAL OR STRAIGHT,

A N D CONTRIVED OR WILLFUL
N o chemistry department would hire an alchemist. A department of crys-
tallography is no place for believers in the psychic power of crystals. N o en-
gineering school would keep someone intent on designing a perpetual motion
108 ANNALS New York Academy of Sciences

machine. An astronomical observatory is no place for people who believe that

the planets are pushed by angels. A biology department would close its doors
to anyone who rejects genetics. N o one who denies the existence of Nazi con-
centration camps or Communist labor camps would be able to teach history
at a decent university. N o mathematics department would tolerate anyone
holding that logic is a tool of male domination and quantity is masculine. N o
Jungian psychology is taught in any self-respecting department of psychology.
Whoever believes in homeopathy cannot make it into an accredited medical
school. To generalize: neither proven falsities nor lies are tolerated in any sci-
entific or technological institution. And for a good reason, too: namely, be-
cause such institutions are set up with the specific purpose of finding, re-
fining, applying, or teaching truths, not just any old opinions.
Walk a few steps away from the faculties of science, engineering, medicine,
or law, towards the faculty of arts. Here you will meet another world, one
where falsities and lies are tolerated, nay manufactured and taught, in indus-
trial quantities. Here the unwary student may take courses in all manner of
nonsense and falsity. Here some professors are hired, promoted, or given
power for teaching that reason is worthless, empirical evidence unnecessary,
objective truth nonexistent, basic science a tool of either capitalist or male
domination, and the like. Here we find people who reject all the knowledge
painstakingly acquired over the past half-millennium. This is the place where
students can earn credits for learning old and new superstitions of nearly all
kinds, and where they can unlearn to write, so as to sound like phenome-
nologists, existentialists, deconstructionists, ethnomethodologists, or psycho-
analysts. This is where taxpayers’ moneys are squandered in the maintenance
of the huge industry of cultural involution centered around the deliberate re-
jection of rational discussion and empirical testing. This fraud has got to be
stopped in the name of intellectual honesty and social responsibility.
Let there be no mistake: I am not proposing that we teach only what can be
ascertained as true. On the contrary, we must doubt our learning, and we must
continue teaching that we are all ignorant in most respects and to some degree
or other. But we must also teach that ignorance can be gradually overcome by
rigorous research, that falsity can be detected, that partial truth can be attained
and perfected-the way Archimedes illustrated with his method for com-
puting successive approximations to the exact value of the area of the circle.
We must also realize and teach that there are two kinds of ignorance: nat-
ural and willful, traditional and postmodern. The former is unavoidable and
its admission mandatory; it is part of being a curious learner and an honest
teacher. By contrast, willful or postmodern ignorance is the deliberate refusal
to learn items relevant to one’s interests. Examples: the refusal of the psycho-
therapist and the philosopher of mind to learn some experimental psychology
and neuropsychology; the refusal of the literary critic with sociological inter-
ests to learn some sociology; and the refusal of the philosopher of science to
learn a bit of the science he pontificates about. All these are instances of
willful ignorance. This is the only intolerable kind of ignorance, for it is a form
of dishonesty. And yet this kind of ignorance is being peddled nowadays in
many faculties of arts.
Charlatanism in Academia BUNG E 109

Willful ignorance comes in two guises: naked or naive, and disguised or

contrived. Naked or indocta ignorantia is the clear rejection of science, or-
what amounts to the same-the denial of any differences between science and
nonscience, in particular pseudoscience, This is what the irrationalists and the
relativist-constructivists preach: it is part of the radical feminist and environ-
mentalist “theories,” as well as of existentialism, poststructuralism, general
semiotics, philosophical hermeneutics, deconstructionism, and similar ob-
scurantist fads.
The first to deny the difference between science and nonscience was Paul K.
Feyerabend, the philosophical godfather of the “new” philosophy and soci-
ology of science. He has been listened to because he was wrongly believed
to know some physics. But in fact his ignorance of this, the one science he
tried to learn, was abysmal. Thus he misunderstood the only two formulas
that occur in his Against Method, the book that earned him instant celeb-
rity.6’ The first formula, which he calls “the equipartition principle,” is actu-
ally the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution function for a system of particles in
thermal equilibrium. (Incidentally, the constant occurring in the correct for-
mula is not R,the universal gas constant, but Boltzmann’s far more universal
k. This is no small mistake, because it renders Feyerabend’s formula dimension-
ally wrong.) The second formula, Lorentz’s, does not give “the energy of an
electron moving in a constant magnetic field” (my emphases), as Feyerabend
claims. Instead, the formula gives the force that an arbitrary electromagnetic
field <E, B> exerts on a particle with an arbitrury electric charge. (Inciden-
tally, the constant c is missing in Feyerabend’s copy-which, again, makes his
formula dimensionally incorrect .) To top it all, Feyerabend substitutes the
second formula into the first; and, not surprisingly, he gets an odd result that,
in a mysterious way, leads him to speculate o n the (nonexistent) magnetic
monopoles imagined by his teacher Felix Ehrenhaft. But the substitution
cannot be made, because (a) the second formula does not give us an energy,
which occurs in the first one; (b) the first formula refers to a system of par-
ticles, whereas the second concerns a single particle; and (c) unlike the
energy, which is a scalar, the force is a vector, and therefore it cannot occur
by itself in the argument of an exponential function, which is defined only
for scalars,62None of Feyerabend’s critics detected these elementary errors-
a disturbing indicator of the present state of the philosophy of science. In sum,
one of the gurus of the new philosophy of science was guilty of indocta
ignorantia. He was also seen as a guru of the student leftist movement.
However, irrationalism, in particular the distrust of science, has n o polit-’
ical color; it is found left, center, and right. Still, in most cases it is passive:
Babbitt is not Torquemada but is just indifferent to and suspicious of intellec-
tual pursuits. On the other hand militant philistinism is strong in the New Left,
the Old Right, and the religious wing of the New Right. This is no coinci-
dence: all of these groups are authoritarian. And, as Popper pointed out half
a century ago, authoritarianism is incompatible with rationalism in the broad
sense, i t . , “the readiness to listen to critical arguments and to learn from ex-
perience.”” Indeed, the citizen of a democracy is supposed to form his own
opinions on matters of public interest, to debate them in the agora, and to par-
110 ANNALS New York Academy Of Sciences

ticipate to some extent in the management of the commonwealth. Rationality

is thus a necessary component of democratic life, just as irrationality is a nec-
essary ingredient of the dressage of a faithful loyal subject of a totalitarian re-
gime. Remember Mussolini’s commandment: “Believe, obey, fight.” So much
for academic antiscience.
Academic pseudoscience is a different ball game: it is far more subtle and
therefore harder to diagnose and uproot. Indeed, it wears some of the accou-
trements of genuine science, in particular an esoteric jargon that fools the un-
wary, or even a symbolic apparatus that intimidates the innumerate. It looks
like science, but is not scientific because it does not enrich knowledge; and,
far from having a self-correcting mechanism, it is dogmatic. Because it mis-
leads the innocent, academic pseudoscience is at least as damaging as out-
right antiscience.

CONCLUSION
I submit that the academic charlatans have not earned the academic
freedom they enjoy nowadays. They have not earned it because they produce
or circulate cultural garbage, which is not just a nonacademic activity but an
antiacademic one. Let them d o that anywhere else they please, but not in
schools; for these are supposed to be places of learning. We should expel the
charlatans from the university before they deform it out of recognition and
crowd out the serious searchers for truth. They should be criticized, nay de-
nounced, with the same rigor and vigor that Julien Benda attacked the intel-
lectual mercenaries of his time (1927) in his memorable L a trahison des
clercs-which, incidentally, earned him the hatred of the so-called organic in-
tellectuals of all political hues. Spare the rod and spoil the charlatan. Spoil the
charlatan and put modern culture at risk. Jeopardize modern culture and
undermine modern civilization. Debilitate modern civilization and prepare
for a new Dark Age.
In former times higher learning was only a refined form of entertainment
and a tool of social control. Today it is all that and more: scientific knowledge,
science-based technology, and the rationalist humanities are not only intrin-
sically valuable public goods but also means of production and welfare, as
well as conditions of democratic debate and rational conflict resolution. The
search for authentic knowledge should therefore be protected from attack and
counterfeit both inside and outside Academia. To this end I propose the adop-
tion of the following Charter of Intellectual Academic Rights and Duties:
1. Every academic has the duty to search for the truth and the right to
teach it.
2. Every academic has the right and the duty to question anything that
interests him, provided he does it in a rational manner.
3. Every academic has the right to make mistakes and the duty to correct
them upon detecting them.
4. Every academic has the duty to expose bunk, whether popular or
academic.
5. Every academic has the duty to express himself in the clearest possible
way.
Charlatanism In Academia BUNGE 111

6 . Every academic has the right to discuss any unorthodox views that in-
terest him, provided those views are clear enough to be discussed
rationally.
7 . N o academic has the right to present as true ideas that he cannot jus-
tify in terms of either reason or experience.
8. Nobody has the right to engage knowingly in any academic industry.
9. Every academic body has the duty to adopt and enforce the most rig-
orous known standards of scholarship and learning.
10. Every academic body has the duty to be intolerant to both countercul-
ture and counterfeit culture.
To conclude. Let us tolerate, nay encourage, all search for truth, however
eccentric it may look, as long as it abides by reason or experience. But let us
fight all attempts to suppress, discredit, or fake this search. Let all genuine in-
tellectuals join the Truth Squad and help dismantle the “postmodern” Trojan
horse stabled in Academia before it destroys them.

NOTES
1 M. Heidegger, Sefn und Zeit, p. 192.
2 Ibid., p. 331.
3 Heidegger, Einfuhrung in die Metaphysik, pp. 20, 37.
4 Ibid., p. 92.
5 Ibid., p. 152.
6 E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europaischen Wfssenschaftgenund die tramendentate
Phanomenologie, p. 187.
7 Husserl, CarfesfanfscheMeditatfonen,p. 68.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 183.
10 Ibid., p. 76.
11 Ibid., section 34.
12 Ibid., p. 118.
13 Ibid., p. 97.
14 E.g.,A. Schu[e]tz, The Phenomenology of the Socfal World;and P. Berger & T. Luck-
mann, The Social Construction of Reality.
15 E.g., H. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology; and E. Goffman, Behavior in
Public Places.
16 M. Lynch, E. Livingston & H. Garfinkel, “Temporal Order in Laboratory Work,”
p. 206.
17 P. Atkinson, “Ethnomethodology: A Critical Review.”
18 H.Garfinkel, Sfudfesf n Ethnomethodology, p. 1.
19 Ibid., p. 11.
20 R. Collins, “Interaction Ritual Chains, Power and Property.”
21 M. F. Belenky, B. M a . Clinchy, N. R. Goldberger & J. M. ’Farule, Women’s Ways of
Knowing. The Development of SeiJ Voice, and Mind. ,
22 Sandra Harding, The Scfence Question in Feminism, p. 113.
23 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Industrial
Society.
24 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
25 D. Patai & N. Koertge, Professing Feminism. Cautionary Talesf m m the Strange
World of Women’s Studfes, p. 157.
26 P. R.. Gross
.
& N. Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels
112 A N N A L S N e w York Academy of Sciences

28 Vilfredo Pareto, A Treatise on General Sociology, section 2087.

29 Ibid., e.g., section 2148.
30 Ibid., section 2466.
31 Ibid., p. 509.
32 Ibid., chapter 5 .
33 Pitirim Sorokin, Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and Related Sciences.
34 Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, vol. 3 , p. 162.
35 Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 55.
36 See S . Lang, The File.
37 Gary S . Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, p. 257.
38 Milton Friedman, “A Theoretical Framework for Monetary Analysis.”
39 See, e.g., D. Kahnemann, P. Slovic & A. Tversky, eds., Judgment under Uncer-
tainty: Heuristics and Biases; and M. Bunge, “Two Faces and Three Masks of
Probability.”
40 See P. Tillers, “Decision and Inference” and the subsequent papers.
41 H. Poincare, Correspondence of Leon Walrus and Related Papers; vol. 3 , pp.
164-165.
42 M. Allais, “The Foundations of a Positive Theory of Choice Involving Risk and a
Criticism of the Postulates and Axioms of the American School”; A. Tversky, “A Cri-
tique of Expected Utility Theory: Descriptive and Normative Considerations”; J. W.
Hernstein, “Rational Choice Theory: Necessary but Not Sufficient.”
43 M. Bunge, “Game Theory is Not a Useful Tool for the Political Scientist”; “The Pov-
erty of Rational Choice Theory”; Philosophy in Social Science; D. P. Green & I. Sha-
piro, Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications i n
Political Science.
44 J . N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics. A Theory of Change and Continuity.
45 Courtney Brown, “Politics and the Environment: Nonlinear Instabilities Dominate.”
46 See, e.g., R . K. Merton, The Sociology of Science. Theoretical and Empirical
Investigations.
47 See, e.g., the journal Social Studies of Science; B. Barnes, ed., Sociology of Science.
Selected Readings; D. Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery; K.D. Knorr-Cetina
& M . Mulkay, eds., Science Observed. Perspectives on the Social Study of Science;
and B. Latour & S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific
Facts.
48 B. Latour, “A Relativistic Account of Einstein’s Relativity.”
49 B. Latour, “Who Speaks for Science?”
50 M. Mulkay, “Some Aspects of Cultural Growth in the Natural Sciences.”
51 D. Goldsmith, ed., Scientists Confront Velikovsky. Papers from an AAAS
Symposium.
52 See, e.g., T. J. Pinch & H. M. Collins, “Is Anti-science Not-science?’’ and “Private
Science and Public Knowledge: The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
the Claims of the Paranormal and Its Use of the Literature.”
53 More criticisms in M. Bunge, “A Critical Examination of the New Sociology of
Science, Part 1”; “A Critical Examination of the New Sociology of Science, Part 2”;
L. Wolpert, The Unnatural Nature of Science; R. Boudon & M. Clavelin, eds., Le
relativisme est-il irr@sistihle?Regards sur la sociologie des sciences; and R.
Boudon, Le juste et le vrai.
54 See, e.g., S. J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man.
55 E. S. Russell, “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee.”
56 Y. Ezrahi, “The Political Resources of American Science.”
57 See, e.g., M. Bunge & R. Ardila, Philosophy of Psychology,
58 R. J. Herrnstein & C. Murray, The Bell Curve. Intelligence and Class Structure i n
American Life.
59 C. Lane, “The Tainted Sources of ‘The Bell Curve”’ and the March 1995 issue of Con-
temporary Society.
6 0 More o n pseudoscience in social studies may be found in M. Bunge, Finding Phi-
losophy in Social Science and Social Science under Debate.
Charlatanism in Academia B U N G E 113

61 P. K. Feyerabend, Against Method. Outline of a n Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge,

p. 62.
62 More o n Feyerabend’s scientific incompetence in M. Bunge, “What is Science? Does
It Matter to Distinguish It from Pseudoscience? A Reply to My Commentators.”
63 K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, chapter 24.

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