Re: Free SHS policy linked to reductions in HIV infections, teenage pregnancies - Ghana Aids Commission Director

Science, they say, is not the mere gathering of facts. The received view of science that those of us who studied the social sciences, and even those who studied the physical sciences, science does not deal with ideas, speculations, conjectures, etc. but rather pure facts.

This was, to say the least, the “nature” of science until some of us had the chance to go to Graduate Schools and were lucky enough to be taught subjects that were “critical” in regard to the definition of science.

What this latter notion of science means is that contrary to what had been taught us in the textbooks about science being an ”anti-intellectual” enterprise is rather false because ideas and ideas play a central role in the production of scientific knowledge.

Conjecturing and speculating about ideas and how disparate ideas relate to each other in space and time is what makes science the enterprise that it is. Yet, merely speculating about the relationships between sets of ideas does not constitute “scientific” knowledge but, rather at best, a hypothesis.

In other words, science is an enterprise that involves the judicious selection of activities that occur in two main environments, namely, the Philosophical/Conceptual domain and the Empirical-Statistical-Mathematical domain.

The first activity, according to the Deductive-Nomological approach to the production of scientific knowledge is the play of ideas or what is technically called Conceptualization, while the second activity is the Empirical assessment/falsification of hypotheses, in the Popperian sense.

The empirical assessment entails the generation of the appropriate data through multiple statistical-mathematical procedures to test a set of hypotheses one generates at the conceptualization phase of the scientific enterprise.

I make this distinction in response to the claims by Dr. Kyeremeh Atuahene, the Director- General of the Aids Commission on Asaase Radio that the Free SHS policy has led to “a 50% reduction in HIV infections and teenage pregnancies” in the country (www.ghanaweb.com, 2 February, 2024).

The link between Free SHS and reduction in HIV infections and teenage pregnancies:

Politicization of science or sheer incompetence?:

It is within the context of this nature of science that one wonders whether the Director of the Ghana Aids Commission, Dr. Kyeremeh Atuahene claims that the Free SHS policy has led to a 50% reduction in HIV infections and teenage pregnancies must be taken with a pinch of salt.

The Free SHS policy is not only a flagship policy of the ruling party, but because it was one of the visions of the NPP, it was steeped in controversy right at its inception. Moreover, HIV/AIDS is still a scourge and therefore very important information for the public to have.

Among the myriad “unmeasured effects” critics of the policy had attributed to it were the unfounded allegation that the policy had led to an increase in teenage promiscuity, youth drug and alcohol use and abuse, gang rapes, and circuitously, teenage pregnancies.

Given the problems attributed to the Free SHS policy when it started in September 2017, why would a person of Dr. Atuahene’s calibre present the findings of such an important study in such a casual, unscientific manner and open himself to attack by the scientific community?

The lackadaisical manner in which Dr. Atuahene presented the study’s findings indeed left many questions unanswered: When was the study designed to measure the effects of the Free SHS policy? Who conducted the study? Was the study a cross-sectional design or was it a panel study that was launched in tandem with the implementation of the Free SHS policy some six years ago? Are the data available for analysis to independent researchers like me?

If indeed this study is not a phantom as some have asserted, and have established that the Free SHS policy has led to a 50% reduction in HIV infections in the six or seven years of implementation, then it is a major milestone by the government and must be disseminated and celebrated.

I hope my critique of Dr. Atuahene will be understood within the context of scientific tenets we all learn as undergraduates. In the same week Dr. Atuahene made these claims on Asaase Radio.com, another study that addresses the issue of multiple sexual partners by Ghanaian men also came out.

However, consistent with accepted scientific tenets, the report contained information not only about the source of the data (the latest version of the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data) but also the author of the study (The Ghana Statistical Services) which commissioned the study.

What is puzzling about this study is that Dr. Atuahene, in presenting the findings of the study, conflates a lot of scientific terms that muddle the credibility of the study further. He uses the terms “link” and “correlation” interchangeably, yet when talking about physical phenomena like HIV infections, “correlation” or link does not equate to “causality”.

So, the question about the credibility of the study is: If the Free SHS policy is merely correlated with this so-called 50% reduction in HIV infections, can one say that Free SHS is the cause of the reduction in HIV infections?

In other words, has this study satisfied the principles of science to the point where Dr. Atuahene and his team can say that the Free SHS policy is a “necessary” and “sufficient” condition for the reduction of HIV infections and teenage pregnancies?

Conclusion:

As an enterprise, science occurs along two poles of a continuum, namely, the ideational-philosophical-conceptual pole and the empirical-statistical-mathematical pole. This definition of science is contrary to what had conventionally defined science as a fact-gathering activity bereft of theoretical entities.

It is within the context of this multi-dimensional nature of science that the claim made by Dr. Kyeremeh Atuahene, the Director of the Ghana Aids Commission that the Free SHS policy has reduced HIV infection and teenage pregnancy rates by half (50%) has raised a few eyebrows amongst some members of the public.

Invariably, those who have been skeptical about this research have charged that the research is mere speculation as opposed to being empirical about the relationship between the Free SHS policy and the supposed rates of HIV infection and teenage pregnancy.

The limited information presented by the Director, and the fact that it was presented by Asaase radio.com, a pro-government news outlet, make the skepticism all the more profound.