Max Weber the German social scientist who wrote his best books in the first two decades of the 20th century. It's considered by many sociologists as the unsurpassed genius of their discipline. You might say that this sheds a strange light on sociology. Isn't it a bit worrying when the towering figures already passed away one century ago? But, then again, think of Einstein or Picasso, Wittgenstein or Stravinsky, Freud or Proust. Sociology does not stand alone amongst the arts and the sciences in honoring somebody as one of their greatest, who did his best work more than 100 years ago. When I say that when Durkheim wrote about suicide he was not at all a failure-free sociologist, you probably understood vaguely what I meant. Durkheim made his personal moral position very clear. He didn't hesitate to say that suicide rates are pathologically high and that we should try to lower them. But what you may not have known is that the expression value free, or in the German language [FOREIGN], became a household term in sociology because of Max Weber. He treated that subject in a fundamental way. Weber's ideas about value free research are still debated today, but you can simply not go around them. Weber forces every social scientist to think about this problem and to take a position that he or she can defend. One of the things that the Weber was adamant about is that a professor at a university who propagates, who advocates his own political preferences abuses his position. He has been appointed because in a certain field he is considered to be one of the best, but that does not give him the right to tell his students how they should vote in the next election. When it comes to value judgements, when the question is not how the world is, but how the world ought to be. Then the most learned professor is not more trustworthy than the guy next door. And if the professor pretends that his scientific excellence enables him to say with authority which political party deserves the support of the students. Then he is just a fraud. The universities, Weber says, have struggled for many centuries to break free from the control of religious and economic and political elites. So please, dear colleagues, do not give away that relative autonomy by turning your academic classroom into a political convention hall. This is an interesting position. Some sociologist might disagree. It has been argued for example, that a sociologist who is very knowledgeable in his field of study should not refrain from giving at least some empirically supported pieces of advice to politicians. They live on taxpayers money, don't they? So why not give society something back in return. Weberr died before Hitler rose to power. But was it such a good thing that most social scientists in Germany hesitated to speak out against national socialism, either inside or outside of the university? And something else, isn't it better sometimes when the professor is completely transparent about her or his political preferences? So the students can judge for themselves if she or he is really as value free in her teachings as she pretends to be. So Weber's position however important, can be criticized. Now when it comes to doing research Weber does not say that values play no role at all. On the contrary, he knows very well that that value judgments drive students to the university, to a certain discipline. And maybe also to a certain problem field within that discipline. There is, in fact, nothing wrong with studying racism. Because you believe that racism is wrong. But when you are doing the research, when you are collecting and interpreting your data then you should try to be as cool and as detached as it is possible to be. Don't force the data in such a way that they produce the conclusion that you hope to achieve when you began your research project. You may have all kinds of strong opinions, but when you are collecting the data, just shut up. Open your eyes and ears. Give social reality an opportunity to talk back. You should, for example, be extremely careful when you might in your interviews, even inadvertently, suggest certain answers to your interviewees. And when the final results are in, check one more time if they really, really, really did not allow your own preferences to create a bias. Now, the best way to do it is to enlist the help of your peers, who may come from an entirely different political or ideological background. Let them check and recheck the whole research process, in order to make sure that you did not, maybe unconsciously, maybe unwittingly push in the direction of a conclusion that you hope to arrive at. And if you really cannot suppress this urge to present social facts in a way that serve your political goals, or your ethical preferences, don't feel ashamed. But stop pretending that you're a scientist. You may become a novel writer, you may become a journalist, a preacher or a politician. You should follow your own demon but you are not a scientist, so stay away from the university.
