The confirmation bias is the most frequently criticized aspect of human scientists’ conclusions. People are inclined to believe that the human sciences are more prone to bias (due to being less scientific than their natural science counterparts). Firstly, just like any other humans, human scientists are prone to commence their search for a conclusion about humankind with prejudices and biases about individuals’ and societies’ natures. People are more likely to think more highly of a branch of society that they are part of. For this reason, human scientists generally find it difficult to be open minded about contentious topics such as racial and gender differences. Secondly, due to the fact that the human sciences deal with individuals, and people are more likely to form emotional attachments with people, rather than math theorems and atom nuclei, over-identification with humans that a scientist is supposed to be analyzing is almost unavoidable. Just like Bruce Parry had to struggle to remain completely objective while on his stay with the Kombai tribe, human scientists struggle to remain free of previous belief and bias while drawing conclusions about humankind. All scientists, especially human scientists, are prone to being affected by bias and emotion when trying to use reason to conclude a general trend in humankind’s behavior. For this reason, there exist all kinds of controversies and disagreements in human science. While trying to draw a conclusion, the confirmation bias leads to scientists only recognizing evidence that contributes to their conclusion. They only notice confirming evidence like such because they are biased to believe that their conclusion is true and they somehow have to prove it to be so. Perhaps the only solution to such confirmation biases is actively pursuing contradictory evidence, and analyzing and acknowledging criticisms that seek to discredit their biased research and conclusions.
A second obstacle to bias-free conclusions is the prison of consistency, which is closely interwoven with the confirmation bias. Like described in the previous paragraph, the confirmation bias is when human scientists only taking into account evidence that supports their beliefs. Similarly, the prison of consistency is when a human scientist refuses to accept his/her confirmation bias as a confirmation bias and proceeds with his/her conclusion. The human sciences are a branch of study where there are scads and scads of disagreement and controversy simply because humankind is an unpredictable branch of study, due to the fact that all humans are different and emotional attachments are less concrete than mathematical ones. This leads to controversy. This kind of controversy most definitely causes some scientists’ conclusions to be trampled under those of others. Therefore, he/she would refuse to abandon his or her beliefs even under the light of contrary evidence, simply to remain accepted by society. The prison of consistency causes beliefs to affect the conclusions of human scientists because it leads to a scientist remaining narrow-minded about his/her current evidence and beliefs, and thus ignoring other evidence that may change his/her conclusion completely.
Another interesting hindrance to bias-free conclusions is the belief bias. In my opinion, it is safe to say that the belief bias is, sort of, a combination of the prison of consistency and the confirmation bias. It is, according to J. Munsch from the Psychological Review, “a cognitive bias in which someone's evaluation of the logical strength of an argument is biased by their belief in the truth or falsity of the conclusion”. This could lead to a belief-laden conclusion as one might draw a conclusion, and not realize that it is illogical and irrelevant simply because one is caught in a prison of consistency and believes that the conclusion is true. For example, if a human scientist comes up with a conclusion that some humans transformed into chickens in Sweden in the year 2000. He/she has evidence supporting this conclusion: 4 people with PhDs from Harvard University have told him so, he has seen DNA experiments that show how identical chicken and human DNA are thus implying a transformation of the latter into the former, and he has read statistics that show the sudden decrease in human population and a sudden increase in chicken population in Sweden in the year 2000. This human scientist has taken into account all the evidence that proves his conclusion true, yet he/she did not stop and think whether his conclusion made any sense at all. His confirmation bias hindered his ability to recognize that humans can NOT transform into chickens, and he did not consider the Verstehen position at all – he did not bother to see the context of the changes in human/chicken population. Finally, he accepted knowledge by authority and thus imprisoned himself in a prison of consistency – that Swedish humans transformed into chickens in 2000. All these little fallacies combined together to form the belief bias – a bias that proves that beliefs do affect a human scientist’s conclusions. A human scientist can fail to see that his/her conclusion does not make any sense if he/she simply believes that it is and has to be true.
In conclusion, human scientists’ conclusions can rarely ever be free of belief. Belief affects conclusions in human science because of the unpredictability of the nature of humankind which inclines human scientists to easily fall prey to biases such as the confirmation bias, the prison of consistency, and the belief bias. People take the fact that the human sciences are less law-based than the natural sciences too seriously, and thus believe that their conclusions can be true even if they are completely random. Additionally, people believe that what they are proving is true, and thus only notice evidence that proves their conclusion true. Finally, people might only want to draw and prove a conclusion simply because they believe it to be true. To sum it up, the beliefs of human scientists significantly affect their conclusions about humankind.
