Science, Politics, and Swift Boats • P. T. Jackson • Page 3
awarded the Bronze Star, and rescued Jim Rassman from the river. I believe that I laid
out the facts as completely as I could” (Dobbs 2004a). His conclusion, after numerous
interviews and trips to the records archive, seems to be a model of balance: “both sides
have withheld information from the public record and provided an incomplete, and
sometimes inaccurate, picture of what took place. But although Kerry’s accusers have
succeeded in raising doubts about his war record, they have failed to come up with
sufficient evidence to prove him a liar” (Dobbs 2004b: 1). In a subsequent discussion,
Dobbs stressed his “independence” from either campaign, and criticized both
campaigns for not permitting him sufficiently “independent” access to the military
records of either candidate (Dobbs 2004a). This independence, he suggested, made his
account more credible than that of either Kerry or SBVT, since he was only interested in
“the facts”:
Establishing the facts is complicated not merely by fading
memories and sometimes ambiguous archival evidence, but also by
the bitterly partisan nature of the presidential campaign (Dobbs
2004b: 1).
Dobbs’ claims for his investigation are uncannily similar to what many claim for
the social sciences: an independence and detachment from partisan struggle that
guarantees them superior access to “the facts” of a situation. On this account, social
scientists are supposed to be able to cut through noise and ambiguity to provide a
neutral substrate of facts that can be drawn upon to resolve political controversies. The
guarantee than they can do this is provided by the methodology that they employ; “the
content is the method,” as the authors of a recent methodological manual put it (King et
Convention