It's not just a science thing, it's also an ethics thing. The truth is good. Departures from it, more often than not, get you into trouble.
A couple examples:
The Guarantee of Medical Accuracy in Sex Education Act was recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. Wouldn't you think that education would be premised on accurate information? What have we come to when it takes a law "to prohibit the federal government from providing assistance to any entity whose materials on human sexuality contain medically inaccurate information"?
Memo to the folks who are spinning this as an unwarranted attack on abstinence-only sex education: If abstinence-only education is not supported by medically accurate information, stop trying to sell it on the basis of medically inaccurate information. You can still try to sell it on the basis of its allignment with a moral standard, if that's why you favor it, but don't lie to sell it on the basis of advantages it doesn't actually have.
Sheesh, if you have to use bad data to sell a view, can you really be certain it's a good view? (And, even if you're certain, should it surprise you that other people won't be when they discover that some of the premises of your argument are false -- and that you knew they were false as you repeated the argument?)
From the political to the personal, I want to pick up on a detail from First Year Teacher's heart-breaking and angry-making letter of resignation (which I saw via A Blog Around the Clock).
She writes, to her Principal:
First, there is a dangerous man in room 134. I have referred to him as Jackass, mostly, but you know who he is. I know that you are aware that he is tracking his female students menstrual cycles on a sheet of paper at his podium because I have told you this. I am certain that you know he also keeps a picture of a female student on his whiteboard and has been observed kissing it by students because, again, I have told you this. At Field Day recently he also laughed along side some male students as they stood behind a female teacher making comments like "This is the best view around!" and "Booty, booty, booty, booty, rockin' everywhere!" He has spit in the face of some male students, pushed a boy into the door, made fun of the accents of Hispanic students, and held votes as to whether students would be punished or made fun of. Again, I made you aware of each of these activities, though you've done nothing about it. I'm not sure how you sleep at night knowing you have allowed this man to be here for two years and are now planning to write him a "shining recommendation" though you aren't allowing him back here. It seems obvious that he is just going to go to another school and behave the same. It is people like you that make child abuse an easy crime to commit. You might want to deal with your issues concerning this.
(Bold emphasis added.)
Someone in the comments ventured that Jackass would likely be all but impossible to fire due to "union rules" and such. But guess what: when accurate information is included in a teacher's performance reviews and recommendations, it is far easier to get rid of predatory teachers. All it takes in a commitment on the part of those writing the performance reviews to actually collect the facts (and here, the principal had many concerned teachers -- maybe students, too -- documenting those facts) and report them accurately. Unions are usually looking for due process for their members -- so Jackass would have a chance to respond to the substance of the review, but when the facts are against you, there's not a lot you can do.
Avoiding grappling with the truth because it's "easier" than actually dealing with the consequences of the truth isn't a responsible option. And, dear principal, dealing with the ugly facts about Jackass as soon as they revealed themselves might have resulted in a much smaller problem with which to deal.
Resigning teacher seems to indicate "I told you so." is good enough to cause consequences in a professional setting.
She might be telling the truth; she might be lying; she might be insane.
In fact, how do we know she even exists? I.e., you might even be lying.
One would hope for a more formal finding of fact before getting all excited about this one.
Mike
Great post, you covered both topics and the linkage in a very interesting manner. Your premise that departures from the truth usally get you into trouble has been so evident in the news lately, especially the US. It seems that the "liars" have gained ascendancy at this time but that their foundation has become so shaky that it is about to take them down with it. Thanks for making me think.
Michael,
I'm not saying, on the basis of a post on a pseudonymous blog, that Jackass (if he exists) should get fired. Rather, I'm suggesting that in situations like the one described above (when they actually occur in the real world), avoiding or sugar-coating the truth in a teacher's performance review is worse than useless. As far as I'm concerned, it could be a completely hypothetical situation and it might still be useful to consider it to learn something about whether a policy of truthfulness is better than a policy of avoiding the truth.
Philosophers like me (if, in fact, I exist) are pretty comfortable trying to learn things from hypotheticals. They're kind of like the scientists experiments -- there might not be a real set up exactly like this outside of my laboratory, but still it can tell me something about how the world out there works.
Janet, can't help but voice my agreement with the spirit of this post, but the details are wanting. You make a good case that sometimes, avoidance of the truth leads to bad consequences. This is the sort of thing that most people take as a serious reason to conform their action to some principle, so it might convince people that they sometimes ought to prefer truth over falsity. Yet, as with everything, the devil is in the details. Your original claim is that truth is good (period). This is not a very easy claim to backup. Witness, for example, the fact that there are a certain number of blades of grass in Harvard yard (as Quine always liked to point out). There is a truth of the matter with respect to the question "how many are there?", and one could spend a lot of time trying to make sure their belief on this topic is accurate. But I fail to see how that would be a remotely good thing. In fact, it seems plausible that it would be very bad in this case, wasting lots of time that could be better spent on other things.
p.s. I realize this is beside the point. You weren't really going in for a lengthy defense of the nature of truth... but you know us philosophers, we just can't help ourselves sometimes.