I have a colleague who goes around declaring that the laws of physics require consciousness to cease with the death of the body. What he really means is that although he has no idea what underlies the phenomenon of consciousness, he can't imagine it's more than an extremely subtle manifestation of physiological processes that come to a halt when the body does. I'd be inclined to agree if he'd put it that way, but he doesn't. He insists on saying “Science has shown it,” which I take to be shorthand for “Stop thinking and believe me.” He invokes “science” as a blessing to sanctify what he says, or as a club to beat into submission those he disagrees with.

The public should be warned about such abuses of the name of science, and two sociologists, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, have set out to do that. “What everyone should know about science” is the subtitle of The Golem, their award-winning book of essays. Written “for the general reader who wants to know how science really works and to know how much authority to grant to experts,” it is a central text in a growing controversy between scientists and those who study science. Collins and Pinch take as their image for science the mythical golem, a “lumbering fool who knows neither his own strength nor the extent of his clumsiness and ignorance … not an evil creature, but a little daft.” Their aim is to explain “what actually happens” in science. Prepare, they enjoin the reader, “to learn to love the bumbling giant for what it is.”

This is a fine goal. Scientists who set themselves up as sorcerers are a menace to the public and to science itself. People ought to have a better idea of what science can and cannot do. Unfortunately, however, though there are many fascinating tales about science in The Golem, Collins and Pinch infer from these studies a seriously deficient picture of the scientific enterprise. Here are some typical conclusions:

1. “Scientists at the research front cannot settle their disagreements through better experimentation, more knowledge, more advanced theories, or clearer thinking.”

2. “The truth about the natural world [is] what the powerful believe to be the truth about the natural world.” […]