Objectivity of Ethnography

In The Image of Objectivity, Datson et al posed a question: "Is scientific knowledge objective?"(Datson et al, 2008) This is a question that had not occurred to me before this reading- that scientific knowledge, the basis of proof for most/all things deemed enlightening, could be considered subjective. Knowing how much scientific knowledge had been used to explain phenomena, how people have made careers out of the search of said knowledge and others have been awarded highly for their scientific discoveries, it is quite difficult to think of all these are influenced by personal desires or "morally corrupted" as Datson et al puts it.

On the other hand, I believe complete objectivity in scientific research and knowledge is not feasible. I think it would quite difficult to make pure observations, be it in a research lab or in nature, without having one's own perceptions influence his/her actions. Datson el all mentioned photography and audio recordings are good instruments of objectivity since they are indifferent to any pre-conceived notion. Hence, the gathering of information by both the audio recorder and the camera are purely objective but that does not prevent the observer from looking or listening to the information with pre-conceived assumptions.

I do believe that pure objectivity would create the best of scientific knowledge but as humans, we are almost constantly perspectives, influenced by our different backgrounds, to make judgments thus, it would be rare to see a pure objective observation especially in ethnography when the all of the culture of a community and its history cannot be fully explained only by a snapshot of an action.