Harvey Milk and Phenomenology

I was listening to an interview with Chris “Mad Dog” Russo on the radio this morning, and I was struck by his citing the film Milk when asked about his view on same sex marriage. Mad Dog is a New York based sports talk show host, for those who don’t know. I’m not saying that all sports talk show hosts are conservative, but from my years of listening to WEEI in Boston, at least on that station, liberal points of view are rarely spoken, and often mocked—by most hosts and listeners alike. Not all, of course. But anyway… The host this morning asked Russo if he was for or against gay marriage and there was a long pause. He balked a bit. But in answering the question, he brought up Milk implying that after seeing this movie, he realized that this was an issue about real people, etc., and that he is for same sex marriage now. (This may not be the entirely nuanced version, but it hits the main points.)

Now, what does this have to do with this blog? Everything. What I take from this is a very clear example of how popular media change public opinion. Popular media change public opinion. Russo was not persuaded by logic here; he was not reading the academic journals on queer theory and persuaded intellectually… He saw a movie, a story, became familiar with the life of one person, and his opinion (and I’m assuming many others’) was changed, or at least began to crack. The initial mission of this blog was born out of a frustration, a helplessness, that all of the good done within the walls of the academy—specifically educational research—go unnoticed or even actively disregarded by the public. But public opinion is what drives policy, which drives assessment, which drives curricula, etc. The mission of this blog was to take issues that tend to have meaning and support only within the academy walls and to get them out. And hearing Russo talk on the radio this morning, I thought it was worth sharing that story.

This, to me, is the point where we need to examine the role of scientific inquiry and the uses of scientific paradigms. That’s why I slipped the word phenomenology into the post title. What I heard in Russo was a man convinced not by logic and reason, but by a glimpse of the lived experience of a gay individual. So what does this say about scientific methodology? What is the proper role of experimental science in a field that means very little unless it can affect public opinion? Here’s the quandary: we like to think that we are ultimately rational, that we are persuaded by reasoning—by logos, not ethos or pathos. But that’s just not the way we operate. Why should it be? I am not saying that experimental methodologies have no role in transforming public opinion—of course they do. But I think we need to shed the naiveté that says they are all that shapes public opinion.

Validity theory—the study of what makes scientific inquiry valid—now considers validation to be an argument, not just a factual number. I mention this in another post. What’s important about this notion that validity is an argument is that arguments only have strength in relation to a given audience. This is huge because the old views of validity treated validation as if it could be done in a vacuum, as if social values had not effect, but they do. What I’m getting at is the validity—the necessity—of scientific methods that expand beyond experiments and that reach their intended audiences. An argument that is valid for one community may be invalid for another. In order to really get this idea, we have to really suspend our disbelief about some social values we take to be universal. For example, the prototype of experimental science, the double blind controlled drug test. This is a form of argument, and it only works on communities that value that type of evidence. We tend to believe that after a series of experiments that show that a drug has intended effects and minimal unintended side effects—enough to convince the FDA—that the drug is worth using. The experiments were valid. But experiments, if you recall from the other post, cannot be valid or invalid; all they can do is provide evidence for a decision, and that decision is where validity lies. So if you were to take a community of people whose religion forbade any kind of drug and show them all the statistical evidence in the world, all the results of the controlled randomized experiments, etc., you would not convince them that taking the drug was their best decision. The experiments have no validity for this audience.

One assumption we have to unpack is something that we tend to believe so strongly, we consider it universal. We tend to believe that life should be extended as long as possible, almost regardless of quality. It’s kind of hard to debate that, as a society, we hold this value. So, holding this value, a drug that will maintain life is a valid piece of evidence for the decision to take it. But if we value a life of purity over longevity… then maybe this scientific methodology is invalid. Validity theory is a hell of a drug!

The point here is that we throw around the words scientific and unscientific is careless, even harmful ways. If you are trying to convince a population that condoms are good for preventing HIV, but you don’t understand the social values that determine what type of argument is persuasive and what rules are worth obeying or breaking, what lines of evidence are convincing—if you assume that all societies are convinced by what we tend to call scientific method, then you are in trouble. Narrative evidence—like a film that chips away at a person’s long standing belief that homosexuals are somehow deviant—this is in some cases much more persuasive than other types of evidence, such as experimental or statistical. So, am I calling Milk science? Of course not. But I am arguing that phenomenology—the method of investigating lived experience—is science, and it’s effective, even more effective than experimental methods depending on the audience. (Yes, science has an audience and must adapt its methods accordingly*.) I’m arguing that we privilege on paradigm of scientific methodology with no real reason for doing so, other than it’s just what our cultural values dictate. So much so that I assume some people reading this are thinking that science is just science, that it’s just right and everything else is just guesswork. But I think this is something we really need to fight about. I am arguing that we need to loosen this grip, especially when US reports call for more scientific evidence-based research on education. Because phenomenological research IS evidence based, and it IS highly scientific. It’s just not experimental or statistical. It provides insight rather than proof sometimes. But think about how powerful insight can be, and how in the face of tons and tons of “proof” we are able to hold on to our beliefs anyway.

Just some stuff to think about in terms of research and science, and how we need to get our research outside the limits of the walls of our tiny scientific communities if this research is to mean anything to anyone other than us.