Wednesday, March 18, 2009

She blinded me with science

TSU welcomes the "rural-urban interface" that sprawl on Bells Bend would bring with the May Town Center development. And who said that scientific research should be value-neutral, unbiased, and double blind? Science does maintain consequentialist values, that is, research by means practically at its disposal to serve academic ends. So, if developers commence with paving over and glutting rural farmland with sprawl-style auto traffic so that science can study the process of urbanization/suburbanization on agriculture, then Bells Bend serves as a proper petri dish for scientific gaze. "Just think about how much we will learn about conservation" becomes the justification of refusing to conserve rural Bells Bend. Science is not without its own irrational inconsistencies or its own economic self-interests that taint its claims to objectivity.

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