ABSTRACT In this article, we explore how scientific inquiry can function ideologically. We distinguish between descriptive and pejorative accounts of ideology and between doxastic and non‐doxastic views, arguing that familiar appeals to bias or error fail to capture certain durable forms of distortion in science. We show how scientific authority, public uptake and epistemic risk render some domains of inquiry especially vulnerable to ideological entanglement. Through case studies on race and the concept of the ‘alpha male’, we illustrate how scientific concepts can function ideologically: not merely by biasing judgement, but by coordinating inquiry and uptake in ways that sustain oppressive arrangements, even in the absence of false beliefs. We argue that such forms of value influence are best understood not as individual bias but as the effect of socially embedded salience structures that shape inquiry and its uptake.
Hufendiek et al. (Sun,) studied this question.