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Under the stewardship of the Department of Education, recent acts of Congress confuse the methods of science with the process of science, possibly doing great harm to scholarship in education. An otherwise exemplary National Research Council report to help clarify the nature of educational science fails to emphasize the complexity of scientific work in education due to the power of contexts, the ubiquity of interactions, and the problem of decade by findings interactions. Discussion of these issues leads to the conclusion that educational science is unusually hard to do and that the government may not be serious about wanting evidence-based practices in education.
Scientific Culture and Educational Research" (this issue), as well as the National Research Council (NRC) report from which it draws, are important documents in the history of educational research. I commend the authors and panelists who shaped these reports, and I support their recommendations. But it is not clear to me that science means the same thing to all of us who pay it homage, nor do I think that the distinctions between educational science and other sciences have been well made in either report. There are implications associated with both these issues.
Definitions of Science
I admire Richard Feynman's (1999) definition of science as "the belief in the ignorance of authority" (p. 187). Unrestricted questioning is what gives science its energy and vibrancy. Values, religion, politics, vested material interests, and the like can distort our scientific work only to the extent that they stifle challenges to authority, curtailing the questioning of whatever orthodoxy exists. Unfettered, science will free itself from false beliefs or, at the least, will moderate the climate in which those beliefs exist. As politicians recognize that "facts are negotiable, perceptions are rock solid," so there is no guarantee that science will reduce ignorance. But as long as argument is tolerated and unfettered, that possibility exists.
Another admirable definition of science was provided by Percy Bridgman (1947), who said there really is no scientific method, merely individuals "doing their damndest with their minds, no holds barred" (pp. 144-145). I admire Feynman's and Bridgman's definitions of science because neither confuses science with method or technique, as I believe happens in recent government proclamations about the nature of...