In Laws, Plato considers that even decent people should be punished when their views of the gods deviate from those established by the state. To re-educate them, it is necessary to imprison them in a “house of return to reason”, where a nocturnal Council will take charge of them to heal their sick soul.
After the investigation by a committee led by a lawyer, the administration of Université Laval made the decision to suspend two professors, Patrick Provost and Nicolas Derome, whose remarks on COVID-19 deviate from what is officially admitted by the state. Has the administration also planned, during this suspension, a “return to reason”, with a nocturnal Council responsible for caring for these sick souls? Unless she hopes, by intimidating these two professors, that they end up censoring themselves in order to “have the right, as Plato says, to live among thoughtful people”?
In a letter published by The duty on July 14 in which more than fifty academics ask the administration of Laval University to lift the suspension of the two professors, Normand Mousseau rightly invokes Karl Popper to justify this request. I would like to extend his argument and thus join the signatories. I will support the idea that it is not only a question of defending academic freedom, but also science itself, of which the administration of Université Laval understands neither the spirit nor the method.
All things considered, the two professors are criticized for a lack of objectivity and biased interpretations. This is to completely misunderstand the meaning of objectivity in science. This is not based, as Popper points out, on the impartiality or objectivity of the scientist. individual. Fortunately, moreover, because if that were the case, objectivity would simply be impossible. The history of science shows with what “passionate stubbornness” many disputes are fought in physics or biology. The partiality shown by some scientists with regard to their “intellectual offspring” is notorious, and the question of conflicts of interest in the medical field is ignored by (or almost) no one.
On what, then, is scientific objectivity based? On “the amicably hostile cooperation of many scientists”—an admirable Popperian formula. Objectivity is not an ascetic individual, but of a social process, that of public debate. As they search for truth, scientists are bound by friendshipbut this research presupposes free mutual criticism, a criticism as severe as possible, hostile – because the truth does not allow itself to be caught by a consensus authoritatively organized by an administration.
In reality, one can neither reproach a majority of scientists for defending their theses tenaciously, nor reproach some of them for criticizing these majority theses as vigorously as they wish. Rather, it is through this disagreement, maintained as long as it can be maintained by argument, that fallible humans can advance science—by trial and error. It is therefore through a fierce discussion, which Popper makes clear that it is a fight, that we can learn something new.
But this fight has its rules: it is neither to play the “offended” by going to complain to the management, nor to have recourse to an administrative suspension. The only authorized, dignified and courageous weapon is argument. Who is the impartial arbiter of these controversies? Is it a committee of insiders assisted by a lawyer? Such would be the answer of a pseudo-rationalist claiming to know with certainty and authority. A genuine rationalist, that is to say a critic, is on the contrary aware of his own limits, and, adopting the formula “I may be wrong, you may be right, and if we make an effort, we can come closer to the truth”, he relies on experience to arbitrate disputes.
It is the journals, congresses and scientific laboratories, that is to say the social institutions where opposing theses are fought, which work to establish the experiments likely to decide. Patrick Provost and Nicolas Derome have therefore, through their criticism — and their courage, given the current context — contributed to the search for truth within these institutions designed to promote scientific objectivity. Far from harming their functioning, they were its legitimate actors, whatever the future outcome of the controversy.
In reality – to conclude with Popper – “only political power, when it is used to repress free criticism or when it fails to protect it, can harm the functioning of these institutions, on which all progress, scientific, technical and political”.