The fundamental philosophical contribution of Austrian-born Karl Popper (1902-1994) is his falsification theory of knowledge. Sometimes it is contrasted with the ‘verificationism’ that emerged from the Vienna Circle in the inter-war period, arrestingly introduced to the English-reading public in A.J. Ayer’s youthful tour de force, Language, Truth, and Logic (1936). But the two enterprises are really quite different. Verificationism seeks to create criteria for meaning, suggesting that the meaning of a proposition can be derived from the way in which it is verified and that, therefore, propositions that were neither true by definition (‘all unmarried men are bachelors’) nor verifiable by observation (‘there is a cat on the mat’) were meaningless. When I was a philosophy undergraduate, in the atheistic environment of 1980s Oxford, ‘God is Love’ was held up as a paradigm case of a proposition which, being neither self-evident from its terms nor provable by empirical means, was not merely wrong but meaningless.
Popper, in his classic Die Logik der Forschung (published in the original in 1934/5 and in English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1959) was trying to distinguish not between the meaningful and meaningless, but rather was attempting to determine criteria for scientific knowledge. Like verificationism, Popper’s roots could be found in the philosophy of David Hume, in this case in Hume’s attack on induction: you could see any number of white swans but never be sure there were no black ones. Your theory could be endlessly confirmed but never ultimately proven. Contradictory evidence could always come along. A scientific theory was at any time a best approximation for the truth. Popper’s inventive move was to argue that if a concept or theory could not be disproven—if no evidence could be produced or envisioned that would disprove it, even in principle—then it was at the very least not a scientific theory.
For Popper, on this criteriion, Marxism and Freudianism were to be classified as textbook cases of pseudo-science. The facts, he argued, were always being used by respective adherents to prove the theory. The proletariat are getting poorer? That proves Marx’s theory. But if they are getting richer, that does too. Whatever such a theory was, it was not worthy, Popper proclaimed, of being considered scientific.
In these days of wokeness increasingly invading the academy, I propose that it is time to deploy Popper as a sharp razor against the pseudo-science (most of it ‘social’) of our day. But to do so, we need slightly to adapt him. If adopted rigorously in academic institutions, we might find the approach I propose catches on. Outside the academic world, too, it could help combat data-free ideas which undermine much of what is valuable in our societies.
A good example is the value of diversity, something which has become the touchstone of modern wokeness and around which whole legal and administrative structures have been built. Various studies have shown, or have purported to show, that diverse teams are more successful, that diverse boards create more shareholder value and that diversity in general is a thoroughly good thing. (The diversity in question is invariably of the ethnic, gender and sexual-orientation kind. Were it, for example, of the political kind, our overwhelmingly Left-liberal universities might be persuaded to be a little less mono-political.)
Studies of this kind may well be true—or they may not be. The question we should ask when confronted by such findings is: If the opposite were found to be the case, could this be published and would we have heard of it? In other words, to invoke Popperian terms, are the propositions contained within the study falsifiable? For Popper, ‘falsifiable’ essentially meant something epistemological or methodological. Was it technically possible to present evidence which could prove the theory wrong? For us, it is more about what is possible politically or sociologically. Of course, in theory, it would be possible to adduce evidence that diverse boards and teams and organisations (however ‘diverse’ is defined) are less successful than ones which, according to whichsoever criteria, are more homogenous. The question for us is—would such evidence be allowed to see the light of day? Would an investigation along these lines be shut down before it got itself together? Would any research essentially aimed at dis-proving the benefits of diversity ever get funding? If it proceeded and were successful, would it ever get published? And if it were published, would its author or authors find their academic or corporate careers stymied at best, ended at worst?
And just as Popper recommended that work failing his falsification criterion should not be taken seriously as science, so we should determine that work failing our falsification criteria should be dismissed. Those producing such work might insist, with some justice, on the methodical and empirical basis of what they are doing. But if they want to have it taken seriously, they need to be working to create the kind of environment in which, if it were theoretically possible to falsify it, there would be no unreasonable obstacles placed in the way of doing so. Making assertions which cannot be refuted for reasons of wokeness (or indeed for any other reason) should be seen as nothing more than the mouthing of platitudes, until such time as falsification becomes socially and politically feasible. In order to achieve what has been called an “institutionalised disconfirmation” of bias, falsification theory should be adapted to insist not only that scientific claims be falsifiable in principle, but to ensure that no obstacles are allowed to prevent false science from being exposed for all to see.
A good example of the kind of research which might benefit from this kind of neo-Popperian scrutiny is the work of the now disgraced and displaced former head of Harvard, Claudine Gay. Let us set aside the accusation of a certain lack of academic originality in the published output of Dr. Gay. Let us overlook for our purposes the fact that, for an academic who reached her giddying position, Gay’s output is somewhat thin, to put it mildly. The subject matter is itself of interest. Take, for example, her essay ‘The Effect of Black Political Representation on Political Participation.’ Gay sums up her findings pithily in the abstract with which she opens:
Using precinct data from eight midterm elections, I demonstrate that the election of blacks to Congress negatively affects white political involvement …
In her conclusion she states:
congressional incumbents routinely experience white turnout rates that are 5–18 points lower than at polling places elsewhere in the state.
In other words, in a system where incumbents are usually returned, white voters don’t turn out for black politicians. Whilst not explicitly stated, the implication is that they are racist: whites won’t vote for blacks because they are black.
Now Gay’s work, for all I can see, is a reasonable and rigorous piece of research. It may not be particularly interesting or original and it is hardly the kind of path-breaking output one might expect of someone gaining tenure at Harvard, never mind reaching the top of the Cambridge, Mass. academic greasy poll. Gray may have a point. It might be important to track such tendencies over time to see the extent to which attitudes are prejudiced and the extent to which that is changing, or has changed. But now imagine that the research had shown that, in fact, American whites vote as readily for blacks as they do for other whites. Would such research ever have been published? If the answer is no, then we should dismiss Gay’s work out of hand. And if Gay wants it to be taken seriously, she should work—or have worked—to ensure that findings which might contradict her own could be created and would be given air time.
In fact, in Gay’s Harvard, the very opposite is true, as we know from the case of Roland Fryer, a black economist who had worked as an equality officer in New York and could be assumed to have all of the suitable liberal opinions. His research found that, although African-Americans were more likely to be stopped by the police, they were no more likely to be shot by the police than whites. Fryer’s work provoked sharp criticism, and his critics had every right to disagree with him, but they received a lively riposte.
Fryer was in due course disciplined, not ostensibly for his findings but for alleged sexual harassment, although Fryer claims that he was strongly discouraged from publishing that part of his work that suggested the U.S. police may not be racist. In this case, the work was published, but the hostility which ensued and the testimony of Fryer suggests that coming to this kind of conclusion is not acceptable on campus and is unlikely to be good for the career of an aspiring academic. A chill is cast over the academic environment and the field of what can be said is restricted. One valid way to combat this, surely, is to drain the credibility of findings that are allowed where findings to their contrary are not. If the only evidence permitted is of grave white racism, then that evidence should be dismissed. Only if we are allowed a full and open investigation, only if contradictory findings are permitted, should a theory be granted credibility. The case for a Popperian approach would work both ways. If we were in an environment in which evidence for white racism could not be adduced, then it would be reasonable to dismiss research showing whites not to be racist. A neo-Popperian approach would not only make academia more lively and authentic; it would lead to truly greater diversity of thought and opinion. Above all, it would get the social sciences out of the woke rabbit hole in which they increasingly find themselves and put them back where they belong: not in the service of promoting ‘social justice,’ but in the service of discovering the truth.
