It took 200 years for the hard sciences to figure out the right way to 'do' objectivity, and arguably it's still evolving (see 'Objectivity'[1] by Daston and Ga

It took 200 years for the hard sciences to figure out the right way to 'do' objectivity, and arguably it's still evolving (see 'Objectivity'[1] by Daston and Galison, nice summary here: https://scienceobjectivity.weebly.com/daston--galison.html https://scienceobjectivity.weebly.com/daston--galison.html). The social sciences have additional problems, saying 'just copy the hard sciences' isn't reasonable. In fact, the idea that objectivity can be done in a simple mechanical way doesn't work for the hard sciences either, and was rejected by them in the early 20th, because it turns out that interpreting the evidence objectively still requires an educated eye. If you've ever had the good fortune (or misfortune, considering the circs) to see one of your own x-rays, you'll know how much you have to take the word of the radiographer for what the photo actually means. Sure, eventually, after much debate, a mechanical formula for interpreting the photo may be developed. Radiographers are probably due to be replaced by AI any day now - but their judgements will have formed the labels of the training data. At the cutting edge of the sciences, you don't have any of that yet. [1] that book was expanded from their earlier paper which can be found here: http://cspeech.ucd.ie/Fred/docs/Galison.pdf http://cspeech.ucd.ie/Fred/docs/Galison.pdf