Historians: Objectivity, Subjectivity, Ethics and Role

• Historians and human scientists have an ethical obligation to consider contradictory evidence to avoid biased findings.

Role Of Historians

• Historians document and interpret significant past events, which enables communities to learn from history and avoid repeating past mistakes.
• History is crucial for understanding global and local contexts.
• Historians search for historical truth in an honest way, with integrity as a moral foundation, even if subject to revision.
• Key ethical obligations include confidentiality, respecting different perspectives, and archival conservation.

Subjectivity vs. Objectivity

• Some believe history cannot be purely objective, complete objectivity is unattainable, it is an interpretation influenced by historians, a construct, not a definitive truth.
• Some believe objective history is attainable through empirical evidence and thorough research and that objective truth is historical truth
• Carr (1961) that "history is an ongoing dialogue between the past and present” (p. 30).

Human Scientists

• Human scientists (e.g., psychologists, anthropologists) are fundamental to society, like historians.
• Differently from historians, human scientists discover and understand how human society works.
• Their work allows for societal evolution and helps address social challenges.
• Ethical obligations include telling the empirical truth obtained through experiments and observation. Findings have an impact on human lives.

Importance of Contradictory Evidence

• For a historical statement to be retained as true, it must be meaningful, verified by robust evidence, and reflect a past state of the world.
• Historians must consider contradictory evidence.
• Ignoring evidence leads to a distorted, superficial, or deceptive version of history.
• Contradictory evidence is defined as evidence that implies two opposite things are true by providing evidence for two opposite sets of facts (Mandavilli, 2025, p.4).

Examples of Ignoring Contradictory Evidence

• France's promotion of its "civilizing mission" (mission civilisatrice) in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean portrayed colonial expansion as a selfless endeavor of bringing ideologies and religion to non-European societies
• This portrayal is a historical narrative, not historical truth.

Historical Narratives

• Historical truth in narrative is frequently protected and shielded from criticism.
• Widely spread colonial historical narratives have been shaped by western power dynamics that continue to influence contemporary society.
• France selected and spread historical facts that aligned with its interests by minimizing or censoring contradictory evidence.
• Reinterpreting history can challenge national myths, create space for marginalized groups to have their stories told, and acknowledge past injustices.
• Besides revising history, reparations, i.e. transnational justice, is needed to reinstate justice and address historical injustices.
• Governments and citizens often object to debunking national myths because it challenges national identity and defends colonial policies.

Bonilla-Silva's Work

• Bonilla-Silva (2018) refutes the myth that racism is not a major problem and invalidates the color-blind concept, which promotes treating everyone the same and ignoring racial differences.

Clarence Thomas

• Justice Clarence Thomas advocates the color-blind ideology enforced in the U.S. Constitution.

Stanford Prison Experiment

• The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by Philip Zimbardo (1971), highlights the disregard of contradictory evidence.
• Zimbardo asserted that situational authority guides people to act brutally, but he ignored evidence that guards' behavior was influenced by him and that prisoners' reactions were exaggerated.
• Ignoring contradictory evidence led to the experiment being discredited.

Holocaust denial claims

• Holocaust denial claims are an example of false contradictory evidence used to contradict historical truth.

The Holocaust as a historical event

• The Holocaust, the systemic genocide of millions of Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II, is a well-documented event with survivor testimonies and Nazi records.

Ignaz Semmelweis's discovery

• Ignaz Semmelweis (1840s) found evidence that a lack of handwashing by doctors spread diseases.
• Contradictory evidence emerged, arguing that diseases spread through polluted air.
• Semmelweis's findings were later recognized as true, while the contradictory evidence was refuted, but the contradictory evidence had deadly consequences in the meantime.

Western Historical Narratives

• Western historians acknowledge contradictory evidence but are largely influenced by their own perspectives and preconceptions.
• Even when historians consider contradictory evidence, it does not guarantee historical truth.
• Vikings and West Africans had engagements with the Americas before Christopher Columbus (1942) but the historical narrative was that he "discovered" the Americas until historians have gradually moved away from eurocentric narratives and adopted a decolonial approach.

Bias in Historical narratives

• The decolonial approach to history aims to deconstruct historical biases established by colonial powers and reinstate neglected voices, indigenous epistemologies, and suppressed historical frameworks.

Conclusion

• Ignoring contradictory evidence leads to distorted or deceptive versions of history.
• Historians and human scientists have a moral duty to consider contradictory evidence.
• Taking contradictory evidence into account does not always ensure truthful statements, as dominant powers can manipulate them.

Explore the ethical obligations of historians and human scientists to consider contradictory evidence, avoiding biased findings. Understand the role of historians in documenting and interpreting significant past events, and dive in the debate of subjectivity vs objectivity.