But in this brief note I shall only try to list a few reasons why scientific method may be inappropriate for ethics. Those persons actually surveyed only record their immediate reactions to questions. Had they reflected deeply they might have given other answers. The respondent's thoughts are forced into an arbitrary mold. But such interviews cannot be analysed statistically unless informal answers are arbitrarily interpreted in terms of a finite set of categories which the subjects themselves did not choose.
Statistical surveys provide too easy a basis for generalizations.
But the generalization goes far beyond the evidence. Political parties and product marketers have used public opinion surveys as a mean of predicting and guiding the behaviours of large populations for the sake of political advertising of various types have definable effects on responses to surveys, or on voting, purchasing or other measurable forms of behaviour, one might begin to entertain the thought that a population may perhaps be tuned and steered like a machine for the sake of political power, financial profit or social or ethical goals. While some of these goals arise form our lowliest greediest instincts, others, like the goals of true bioethics, are highly laudable. But thinking and impassioned humans. Dreams of workable global ecological policy and of a really democratic Eastern Europe have not yet given any grounds for belief that they can be realized.