ABSTRACT
Concern about bias has sharpened recently, especially as the non-specialist public has become more skeptical about a range of scientific claims: anthropogenic climate change, the safety of genetically modified organisms, and the shared ancestry of humans and other primates, to list only a few of the most prominent. The work of the Reverend William Whewell blazed a trail in the study of knowledge about the natural world that continues to influence the way we understand how science and scientists work. Though his official title in 1837 was President of the Geological Society of London, Whewell had already set his sights on higher things than rocks. The philosophy of Karl R. Popper offered a way out of the problem of individual bias. In his Logic of Scientific Discovery, Popper seemed to sidestep the issue of biased perception entirely and, in so doing, revealed one of the blind spots in the models of scientific epistemology going back to Whewell.
