Consider the following statements :
1. Scientific investigation depends on commitment to practical ideals.
2. Honesty is particularly important in science.
Select the correct answer from the codes giv

Question

Consider the following statements :
1. Scientific investigation depends on commitment to practical ideals.
2. Honesty is particularly important in science.
Select the correct answer from the codes given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, both statements 1 and 2 are correct. Statement 1 is right because scientific investigation is not pure abstract logic: it only works if the investigator actually holds to a set of working (practical) commitments — evidence in preference to authority, accuracy in measurement and record-keeping, results that another laboratory can reproduce, and willingness to let a favoured claim be refuted by data. Drop those commitments and the method stops delivering reliable knowledge, however clever the theory. Statement 2 is right because science is cumulative and mutually dependent: every researcher builds on thousands of reported results that she cannot personally re-check, so a single fabricated or shaded finding contaminates everything later built on it. Peer review and replication — science's self-correcting machinery — assume that the published report is a truthful account of what was actually done and observed; that is why fabrication, falsification and plagiarism are the defining forms of research misconduct, and why the same idea appears in our Constitution as the Fundamental Duty under Article 51A(h) 'to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform'.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Neither statement is objectionable. Statement 1 restates the ordinary description of scientific practice as a discipline of working commitments (accuracy, reproducibility, openness to refutation), and statement 2 restates the near-universal position of research-ethics codes that honesty is the load-bearing virtue of science. Calling both wrong would require holding that scientific work needs no commitments at all.  (c) This rejects the more secure of the two statements. Honesty is not merely one virtue among many in science — it is the precondition for the system to work at all, because scientific claims are accepted on the strength of reported evidence that most readers cannot independently regenerate. Every major code of research integrity therefore places honest reporting at its centre.  (d) 'Unpredictable' is not a valid verdict on a statement in a statement-evaluation question — a statement can be correct or incorrect, not unpredictable. Even setting the wording aside, statement 2 is a settled and non-controversial claim, so nothing about it is left open.

Concept: Beyond formulae and facts, science is a social practice governed by norms. The sociologist Robert K. Merton set these out in 1942 as universalism (a claim is judged on evidence, not on who made it), communalism (findings are shared, not hoarded), disinterestedness (the researcher does not shape the result to suit a personal stake) and organised scepticism (every claim is open to challenge). These are exactly the 'practical ideals' statement 1 points at. Honesty is the one that carries all the others: replication, peer review and citation all presuppose that the reported observation is what was actually seen.

State PCS 2024 Q11 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q11 — Science & Technology PYQ with Answer