A Science with Participant Observation?

Each time I take an anthropology class and we go into ethnography one critical questions comes up. Is Ethnography a science? And if so what type of science? There always seems to be such a great divide between the social and natural sciences and Anthropology tries to straddle the two, which inevitably leads to skepticism. From the readings, what I am interested in is how the notion of participant observation plays into this question. Participant observation involves the ethnographer actively taking in role in the environment they are studying. On the other hand non-participant observation is when the ethnographer purely studies the new environment (although that in a way will affect the environment). Can an ethnographer remain objective when participating. This isn't a chemistry lab. The subjects here are human and beyond that the ethnographer is a human with previous rules and traditions affecting how they view the world. For example in Atkinson and Hammersley's text they write about how feminists believe works written are them are skewed by the masculine view the observers inherently have. But how do you get around a problem like this? Can you truly wipe the slate of a human clean of previous experiences so they can objectively observe a new population of people?

As far as I can tell, through readings and classes, there are attempts to further objectify anthropological work. This includes going into the qualitative side and taking counts and surveys. Still the "Human" aspect is one of the defining aspects of anthropology. Bottom line this subject must continue to balance and straddle the lines between purely scientific and social humanity domains of study. To do so will probably require set standards and rules as a basis for ethnographers to work with and then apply their own twist depending on the situations they encounter on the field.