Concept-centered versus organism-centered biology

Abstract

Controversies occur frequently, are unavoidable, and probably represent an important component of biological research. Ironically, emerging empirical evidence appears to contribute less to the development of controversy than the fierce loyalty with which many biologists adhere to some traditional methodology and/or outlook in their scientific discipline. Not infrequently, prevailing attitudes inhibit biologists from recognizing that a new experimental protocol might provide an appropriate means for testing an established hypothesis.Lack of consensus about the suitability of different experimental approaches can also help explain why scientific manuscripts and grant proposals which support existing theory and which have employed traditional approaches encounter less difficulty during the review process than do those manuscripts or proposals which contest established hypotheses or which offer alternative hypotheses and approaches. That is true even if the conclusions drawn in supportive manuscripts and proposals are not parsimonious. When a biologist's allegiance to an established hypothesis and/or when a traditional methodology becomes the overriding concern in research, new empirical evidence emerging from careful study of living organisms becomes relatively unimportant.I provide here some examples of biological controversies and disparities that stemmed from adherence to prevailing hypotheses. The biologists involved either did not recognize that favored hypotheses lacked confirming empirical evidence or that those hypotheses could not account for important new evidence. © 1989 by the American Society of Zoologists.