Truth, trust and power

This piece builds on some thoughts shared in another post on Either/Or Thinking and goes deeper on one the most deeply ingrained binaries: the nature of truth.

When Michael Gove said in the run-up to the Brexit referendum that “people in this country have had enough of experts,” there was an uproar.

A few months later, Kellyanne Conway came out with a memorable phrase of her own, defending the lies around the turnout to Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony by referring to “alternative facts,” prompting her interviewer Chuck Todd to reply, “alternative facts are not facts… they are falsehoods.”

At a time of climate change and a global pandemic, lies cost lives. Time and time again we have heard a clamour to get behind academic expertise and defend objective, indisputable truths.

That all sounds very straight forward… but is it?

In the weeks after George Floyd’s murder last year, an article written by Tema Okun and shared widely online criticised unquestioned objectivity as a feature of white supremacy culture. Okun was challenging the idea of objective truth — clearly not for the purpose of turning people towards a populist alternative — but to shine a light on the role of race and power in creating what we consider to be true.

No sensible person wants to revisit questions about the shape of the earth, but we should all care about how powerful people can shape and even distort what we consider to be true. Between the obvious cases for acceptance or scrutiny, there it is — it seems — a grey area.

The point of this piece is not to go into a philosophical discussion about the nature of reality. It is simply to state that:

• if we agree that the ability to assert what is objectively true comes with power, and
• if we agree that the systems upon which that power rests contain and replicate blind spots and biases,
• then what we consider to be objectively true may in fact be only partially true for some people in some contexts — or worse, be a distortion or a misrepresentation of a broader truth.

This piece seeks to lean into this grey area between the true vs false binary — the question of truth relates to two other concepts — power and trust.

Objectivity and history

Historians aspire to give an objective account of the past — a “true” account of what came before us and how it led to us to where we are now.

The criticism of history as being “written by the winners” is not new, but that does not stop the idea of “history” being wielded to protect the status quo.

One of the most polarising debates in recent times has been around the forceful taking down of statues of former slave-owners. Those defending the statues have often accused opponents of trying to erase or re-write history or to undermine democracy, as if activists were ripping up a single, “objective,” shared account of the past. This argument was often applied beyond the question of statues, and to the anti-racist movement more broadly.

Anti-racist movements made the counter-argument that black voices were systematically excluded from the national story, including by punishing enslaved black people who knew how to write. By contrast, profiteers of slavery were celebrated and had their crimes swept under the carpet. By raising awareness of this enormous act of systemic violence, activists argued that they were not erasing history, but bringing it to light.

Those advocating for the preservation of these statues countered that even if taking down statues isn’t an attack on truth, it is still an attack on democracy. The assumption is that, even if this version of history is incomplete or harmful, it is the one that the majority have agreed on, and that counts for something.

Putting aside the ethics of that argument, in most cases, it is based on a false assumption. The majority of statues of people in London were not built as the result of any kind of democratic process, but were commissioned by the individuals, families or wealthy supporters. Even the famous case of Edward Colston, the statue torn down in Bristol in 2020, was privately funded with political incentives.

The question of when tearing down a statue is or isn’t a legitimate act is a very complex one, beyond the scope of this piece. The point here is to show how a story designed with a violent political agenda can be broadly accepted as a truth that is either objectively real, or at least, agreed by consensus. That appeals to what we consider as Western/European/British values, obscuring the fact that it closes the space for dialogue, justice, and ultimately, truth itself.

Objectivity and science

History, perhaps, is an easy target. Let’s take another discipline striving for objective truth — science and statistics.

In her book “Invisible Women,” Caroline Criado Perez brilliantly demonstrates how researchers have systemically failed to consider the importance of sex and gender. Examples include studies around the efficacy or potential risk of harms done by new drugs that contain all-male subjects, leading to conclusions that are “more true” for men than they are for women. Another example shows that women in the UK are 50 percent more likely to be misdiagnosed after a heart attack, because heart failure trials have typically only included men.

The field of psychology has also been rocked in recent years by a crisis in replicability and “objectivity.” Tim Harford’s “How to Make the World Add Up” is full of examples of how statistics can be misleading — either intentionally so to protect a vested interest, or as a result of blind spots and biases. As Harford argues, “there are some overtly racist and sexist people out there — look around — but in general what we count and what we fail to count is often the result of an unexamined choice, of subtle biases and hidden assumptions that we haven’t realized are leading us astray.”

Blind spots and biases may seem more excusable than providing intentionally misleading information, but their amplification across the system is still the result of privilege and power imbalances. So the point remains — that without a scrutiny of power, disciplines we assume are “objective” can end up doing harm to those in excluded or marginalised groups.

Advocates of history and science will often be the first to recognise these risks and to take steps to mitigate them — the scientific review process being a good example. Scientists are increasingly aware of how this process itself needs to be made more representative to serve their purpose.

None of this is an argument to dismiss disciplines striving for objectivity. As Harford says, “it’s easy to lie with statistics — but it’s even easier to lie without them.” It is simply a reminder that any effort at attaining “truth” will welcome scrutiny, when done in the right way.

“Objectively… I am right”

When the opposite is true and “objectivity” is wielded to make a personal attack or silence debate, it should be a red flag. Telling the “truth” has become part of the brand of influencers like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Piers Morgan, whose supporters write how they logic “destroy” or “humiliate” the opposition with logic and reason.

Given that thinkers like Criado Perez and Okun make their arguments from the perspective of race and gender equity, it might not come as a surprise that the people who most dogmatically identify as objective or logical are those with power they want to hold onto and defend: often conservative, highly-educated white men. Shapiro even has it pinned on his Twitter bio: “facts don’t care about your feelings.”

Maybe not — but facts should certainly care about scrutiny, transparency, and accountability. When they are instead wielded to silence reasonable questions from voices that are already under-represented, the mask of “objectivity” slips and reveals something much uglier.

None of this means that I reject all attempts at objective discussion, of course. It does mean that any time I hear someone begin an argument with the word “Objectively…” it makes me pay attention. I have found that it is invariably used not where the speaker feels most confident, but where they feel most vulnerable. And when trying to bring the question of power into the conversation, it is often a good place to start.

Truth & Trust

The really difficult question is therefore not if to ever scrutinise truths, but how and when.

Ultimately, our judgement of what to accept as true comes down to trust, and specifically, trust of the systems that produce objective “facts.”

Trust is again not a binary either/or, but a judgement based on the information we have and on our own experience. Different groups have different levels of trust of different systems, often legitimately based on experiences of discrimination and exclusion.

I chose to get the vaccine for Covid-19 as soon as it became available, because I trust the scientists’ judgement that it was the best thing to do, far more than I trust the competing claims of anti-vaxxers. That might be easier for me as a white male raised in the UK than it is for another individual whose experience with institutions of authority has been very different.

There is of course a delicate balance here — enough scrutiny to build trust in our institutions, but not so much as to undermine them. Lies cost lives — but biases and blind spots that lead to distrust can too.

Recognising and addressing legitimate distrust can take a number of forms. Many have spoken to the importance of communications campaigns with appropriate messengers, but in many cases, this risks addressing the symptoms of distrust rather than the root cause. Most importantly, building trust will require a genuine admission of where our systems have been exclusive and where they have produced unrepresentative and partial truths, as well as a commitment to rectifying the harm and building something more just.

That does not mean siding with populists or conspiracy theorists. It means standing up for science, democracy, and “truth” itself.