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Boyd Maples

Sociology
Wed, June 5, 2019

The study of sociology should ideally be treated just like any other branch of science, and in the
interests of being honest and academically consistent, it should follow all of the preestablished
rules of scientific inquiry, such as objective experimentation and repeatability. However,
studying sociology can range from observing large-scale long-term social trends, much of it also
involves very personal observation, including observation of some things that people might
consider socially unacceptable. For example, it would be hard to get accurate figures on rates of
infidelity amongst married couples based strictly on self-reporting (a system of obtaining results
known for its inaccuracy even before you factor in self-incrimination). Additionally, just the
knowledge that someone is observing you will change your behavior whether you realize it or
not. So, the only way to do this study accurately would be to randomly sample married people
from a population and surreptitiously observe them over a period of time and record the rate
of cheating. You may also recognize this type of testing to be wildly unethical, similar to the
Tuskegee Syphilis study or the study mentioned in the book where the researcher
surreptitiously observed the sexual proclivities of homosexual men in a time before such
activities were as socially acceptable as they are now.

Informed consent for experimentation is considered necessary to be a responsible scientist but


(not to sound like a mad scientist) it is inconvenient for getting good data at times. All of the
data gathered by Laud Humphreys1 is perfectly valid by itself, it is just a record of the activities
that he witnessed, but nobody can use it in good conscience because of how it was gathered.
However, do you think that he would have gotten that data if he had not hidden what he was
doing? Probably not. The problem is that things that are taboo are not mutually exclusive with
things that require study, but studying these things often requires embroiling yourself in that
taboo more than most people would be comfortable cooperating with. I am not saying that
what Humphreys did was ethical or acceptable, but it is just an illustration of how necessary
ethics can be seen as a roadblock by the more curious and less scrupulous.

Apart from the importance of basic ethical concerns, another point of contention is the real-
world use of sociology. Some, such as John Galliher1 believe that sociology has a moral
obligation to study social trends that they believe to be harmful and to pass judgement on
them, as opposed to being neutral observers and recorders. While I may understand the
viewpoint that this argument is coming from, I reject it totally because of how unscientific it is.
The job of a scientist is, among other things, to record empirical facts as accurately as possible
and with as little bias as possible. Going into and experiment or study with clearly defined
standards about what outcomes are “acceptable” and what outcomes are “good” or “bad” is
and intentional injection of personal bias into the scientific process that cannot be accepted. In
no other realm of truly scientific thought is this blatant injection of personal bias considered a
good thing. Just imagine if you were reading a paper on the social behavior of chimps in the
wild and halfway through, the paper stops being about methodology and the results of
observations and suddenly breaks into a tangent about how all of the chimps are big meanies
for excluding one of the chimps from the pack. True science has to be empirical and cannot take
sides. If you misuse it to champion any belief or social movement, no matter how just that
belief may be in a vacuum, you are doing much more harm than good. If you hold a belief, and
you find research to back that up, then that should be an encouragement, but if you decide to
research something explicitly to back up your beliefs, then you are severely damaging the
credibility of science as a whole.

1. Henslin, J. M. (2018). Sociology: A down-to-earth approach. Retrieved from


https://platform.virdocs.com/r/s/0/doc/576369/sp/52209362/mi/220733527/toc?cfi=/
4/8&sidebar=true pg14, pgs144-145

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