Comment: On Ambiguity and Rhetoric in (Social) Science

Abstract

There is a common thread that runs through Roberts' and Abbott and Barman's articles: an untrammeled faith in the supreme virtues of science, formalism, hypothesis testing, statistics, particularly new, sophisticated statistical techniques. Expressions that attest to such a view abound in the two papers (e.g., probabilistic inferences, unambiguous encoding, rigor, new algorithm, formally evaluate, sequence analysis). The authors are driven by a common goal of getting away from the murky waters of personal interpretations in the social sciences. They are animated by the firm belief that exact measurements and formal constructs is the way to go. I am sympathetic to that manifesto. As someone who has been actively involved in the search for solutions to substantive and methodological problems similar to those addressed by these authors, I applaud their noble dream. I do share the authors' belief that formalism may add precision to our theoretical frameworks, that conceptual rigor is better than muddled argumentation, that counting, whenever possible, is better than guessing. Yet, a close reading of these articles reveals scientific practices that leave me quite skeptical about that optimistic view of science. I will use Roberts' own concept of ambiguity to highlight the many ambiguities that creep in beneath his method of unambiguous encoding. Similarly, I will use Abbott and Barman's concept of rhetoric to illustrate the rhetorical devices that the authors use in the construction of their argumentation. Perhaps, there is no way out of ambiguity in science, and, certainly, there is no way out of rhetoric-no matter how we choose to present our points, our presentation will always reflect certain rhetorical practices. But within the infinite ways of writing science, there are ways that are more or less open, more or less transparent about the conditions of their own production (or if you will, that what is shoved under the rug, is