The practical implications of a critique of traditional science

Patti Lather writes of the convincing critique of traditional science that has amassed in the past 2 decades. The displacement of the assumptions of traditional science makes space for some interesting and exciting developments in the human sciences. However this theoretical rearrangement is not matched in practical spheres. While Lather is referring to educational research I would include nursing when she writes, ‘positivism retains its hegemony over practice’. There is ample evidence of the effects of this domination in nursing. Nurses work closely with the medical profession, which is still predominantly influenced by ‘scientific’research, and health administrators who are in organizations which are bureaucratic and preoccupied with rationality. Medical practitioners control research ethics committees and funding bodies, which have relatively few nursing representatives and continue to judge proposals for qualitative projects by applying standard ‘scientific’criteria. The administrators control budgetary matters and impose standards in the organizations. The dominance of traditional science needs to be challenged if nurses wish to make a place for different ways of knowing in their practice.