Losing knowledge in pursuit of objectivity

The focus on measurable findings at the cost of context risks losing the qualitative meaning of research.

In academic circles and the output of think tanks, one ideal is treated with almost unquestioned reverence: objectivity. Contemporary research culture prizes neutrality, measurement, and replicability above all else. We rely on datasets, statistical significance, and randomised controlled trials, convinced that by removing human influence, we are inching closer to an unimpeachable truth. Yet an uncomfortable paradox is becoming increasingly evident: in our relentless pursuit of perfect objectivity, we are gradually eroding a richer, more meaningful form of knowledge.

The heart of the issue lies in a widespread conflation of information with knowledge. Our digital era allows us to collect data on an unimaginable scale – terabytes of climate readings, sprawling health databases, and vast repositories of social metrics. We have perfected the art of accumulation. But information, no matter how abundant, is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge emerges when information is interpreted, contextualised, and transformed into insight. It is the capacity to pose meaningful questions, to discern subtle patterns, and to grapple with the broader implications of what data reveals.

This confusion is reflected in the structures that govern modern research. Funding agencies increasingly prioritise projects with clearly measurable outcomes, favouring the easily quantifiable over the intellectually ambitious. Journal impact factors – blunt, reductionist proxies for quality – often carry more weight than the originality or conceptual depth of the work they index. These incentives shape the kinds of research that are undertaken. Instead of encouraging bold, integrative inquiry, our system rewards the production of tidy, objective data points while discouraging exploration of complex, ambiguous, or fundamentally human questions. We risk perfecting the ability to map individual trees while losing sight of the forest’s intricate, interconnected ecology.

Social Science, a modern discipline, is also an outcome of enlightenment, modern philosophy, and of an era where the empirical episteme reigned supreme and thus, this discipline was influenced by a philosophical system that held the scientific method as supreme. During the Enlightenment, the positivist paradigm of research, which rejected the theological and metaphysical viewpoint of the Middle Ages, established its foothold; it regards science as the sole means of discovering the truth about the world.

Social Science, which emerged during the late 19th century, was also influenced by this supremacy of science. Science, as a discipline, started directing and shaping the production of knowledge in social sciences, and the evaluative/outcome-oriented probing of immediate concerns in science started influencing social science research. The science paradigm espouses the employment of empirical explanation and method for all sorts of issues, whether physical or social.

According to this framework, universals about human behaviours can also be found if they are studied scientifically and objectively under a well-controlled environment using quantifiable observational techniques. The discipline of discoveries and inventions is expected to have an impact on the human world, but a discipline with concepts, constructs, and abstracts cannot have an impact straightaway; it casts an ‘effect’ on the human world and understanding.

What the numbers don’t say

The consequences are especially visible in the social sciences. A rigorously designed quantitative study on poverty may yield flawless statistics on income distribution, educational attainment, or health disparities. Yet such information remains incomplete. It cannot express the daily anxiety of financial precarity, the psychological burden of marginalisation, or the gradual erosion of agency. These dimensions emerge through qualitative approaches – ethnography, narrative inquiry, and long-form interviews. Although sometimes dismissed as “soft” or insufficiently objective, such methods reveal lived realities and provide the interpretive depth required for humane and effective policy-making.

Even the natural sciences are not immune from the pitfalls of objectivity-worship. The pressure to present simple, unequivocal findings feeds into the replication crisis, encouraging researchers to tidy their results into more publishable forms. The reality of scientific discovery – the failed experiments, the intuitive leaps, the uncertain detours – is often absent from the final, polished article. In the pursuit of objectivity, we obscure the creative, iterative nature of science and replace it with a sanitised narrative of linear progress.

This critique is not an argument for abandoning rigour or ignoring bias. Methodological precision remains essential. But objectivity should not be treated as the only virtue worth pursuing. What we need is a research culture that embraces integration rather than exclusion. Social science research or social science education should be oriented/concerned with the ‘impact’ or ‘effect’ on making sense/adjustment with the world. We must appreciate the difference between impact and effect through the difference between ‘measurability’ and ‘perceptibility’. Social Science research ought to evolve a different set of grammatology, vocabulary, and foundational bases for the concerns of ‘validity’ and ‘legitimacy’, as merely borrowing them from sciences would lead to a quantitative understanding of the human world, which will only be a partial story.

Moreover, in social sciences, research may not always be a process to produce ‘new’ knowledge; it can also be reapproaching the existing knowledge. The ‘homogenising’ of research as the only one decided and guided by the frame of scientific research will not take us any further.

Unpretentious understanding emerges from the interplay between quantitative and qualitative insight, between objective measurement and subjective interpretation. It requires valuing the synthesiser who weaves diverse findings into new frameworks as much as the specialist who generates the data. It demands collaboration with the humanities to interrogate the ethical, cultural, and societal ramifications of scientific advancement. The aim of research should not be sterile, detached neutrality, but a transparent, responsible pursuit of meaning. Researchers are not passive recorders of reality; they are interpreters. And the most profound knowledge is found not in isolated facts, but in the relationships among them. If we fail to rebalance our priorities, we may continue to produce mountains of objective data while losing the very understanding such data is meant to illuminate.

(Navneet teaches at the Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala; Gurubasavaraj teaches at Rani Channamma University, Belagavi)