I think that line ruined the review for me, that whole paragraph just chastises the notion of evidence
I think that line ruined the review for me, that whole paragraph just chastises the notion of evidence
Keep in mind faith has a specific meaning as a belief in something you yourself can't prove. IE, you aren't repeating these experiments, thus you take it on faith they are correct - a critique of science originally put forth by Richard Feynman the Nobel Prize winning physicist.
That's a semantic quibble which isn't really relevant to the point that Harrison is making in the rest of the quoted paragraph.
But yes, you can have misplaced faith in e.g. null hypothesis significance testing and other methods of data collection and analysis common in some of the social sciences.
What you describe is more like fideism.
Using faith and belief interchangeably seems disingenuous and ignores the religious context that is part of faith. Faith implies a lack of compromise, a concreteness, and unwillingness to change. Using that term to describe evidence based science, and the belief that evidence ought to be presented before a belief is held is an attempt to reduce science to dogma.
edit: the word "Scientism" is probably closer to the meaning here; science and rationality as a belief system in itself, as opposed to tools that help us understand physical processes. Faith in these tools to supply meaning and create a better society, often to absurd levels.