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We all know about one very popular picture of the ideal academic researcher. Universities are supposed to be populated by 'free thinkers', people who think critically, come up with original ideas, and go down independent paths irrespective of research 'fads and fashions'. In the ideal, academic reseachers are non-conformists, people who do not follow particular lines of inquiry because of pressure from others, or because of obedience to authority figures. According to a popular stereotype, academic researchers 'speak their minds', they 'speak truth to power' and blaze new trails - unafraid of worldly consequences. According to this image, there are no power monopolies in academic research, and certainly no dictatorial styles of behavior.
Academic research should be the farthest thing from dictatorship of any kind.
Of course, in practice the situation is very different from this ideal image of academic research being guided by 'free thinkers'. The history of psychological science clearly demonstrates this point. Think back to how time after time, psychological research became dominated by 'fads and fashions' that many people at the time recognized as wrong, but conformed to anyway because the pressure was too great to be able to rebel against.
A classic example of this is provided by the history of radical behaviorism. For almost half a century early in the 20th century, psychological research was dominated by a 'school of thought' that shunned the study of the self and thinking. In large part because behaviorism seemed to bring with it complex new technologies and 'scientific' respectability, many researchers conformed and went along with it. Very importantly, behaviorism enabled psychology to present itself as an 'objective science' and to attract larger funding for research. In turn, higher research funding made university administrators happier. It was only when the cognitive revolution came along with the aid of the new computer technologies in the 1950s, that behaviorism gradually lost its power monopoly. In hindsight, now most psychologists look back and ask themselves, how could psychological research have lost its way? How could we have rejected the study of thinking and the self for so long?
A new power monopoly and a new kind of 'dictatorial mindset' is taking over psychology in the 21st century. Once again, the attraction is new technologies and, very importantly, the promise that new technologies have for psychology being accepted as a bona fide science. But it is not only psycholigical researchers conforming and obeying according to the new ethos. Once again, university administrators are pushing psychology along a particular research path because of the higher funding opportunties to be found in this new research path.
Instead of radical behaviorism, the new mindset is radical neuroscience. Psychology departments all over the United States, and increasingly all over the world, are conforming to the new fashion. Nevermind that critics have pointed out the shortcomings of radical neuroscience, and discussed concepts such as the 'mereological fallacy' and 'embodied cognition'. These criticisms are lost on fad-following researchers, who are sure that any study with brain imaging added on must be more 'scientific'. It seems we are doomed to go through several decades when every classic study will be replicated with brain imaging added on.
Critics will point out that it is not 'bits of the brain' that have emotions and think, but whole persons, and that it is wrong to attribute the properties of wholes to parts. But of course it will take several decades before radical neuroscience will run its course - just as radical behaviorism took decades to lose power. Studies will be done on 'Einstein's brain' to show how it is 'abnormal' in various ways, and so it must have been this 'abnormality' that accounts for Einstein's brilliance. It will take decades before the obvious criticism sinks in: there are hundreds of thousands of individuals with the same 'brain abnormality' as Einstein, but none of them produced anything like the Theory of Relativity!. It was Einstein the person and not a 'brain abnormality' that produced his ideas.
When we look at the Egyptians, Iranians, Syrians and others trying to end dictatorships in their societies, we should not imagine that we have completely evaded the influence of power monopolies and dictatorial styles of thinking. Conformity and obedience is high in academic research - just look at the history of fads and fashions, just look back at radical behaviorism and the current reign of radical neurosicnce. Who dares to stand up against the hegomony of brain imaging research, with its high funding and air of 'scientific respectability'?
Watch a video on The Psychology of Dictatorship
