Friedrich Hayek also calls the problem a prejudice. He says it is an abuse of reason. He wrote a whole book on it: The Counter-Revolution of Science. Studies in the Abuse of Reason.
It's been a while since I read it, but I should look at it again. Part deals with scientism. If you haven't run across that word here before you can read about it on this thread. It describes scientism as that bias or prejudice that insists that "that truth and knowledge of reality can be derived only as outcomes of the scientific method."
Hayek himself quotes Adam Smith on the abuse:
Systems which have universally owed their origin to the lucubrations of those who were acquainted with one art, but ignorant of the other; who therefore explained to themselves the phenomena, in that which was strange to them, by those in that which was familiar.
Those who only do biology and no philosophy would have difficulty getting through the book. But I'm sure that the philosophy of science should eventually become part of their studies and that students should not follow any teacher who would suppress that part of science as being irrelevant.
Hayek describes scientism as follows:
a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed. The scientistic as distinguished from the scientific view is not an unprejudiced but a very prejudiced approach which, before it has considered its subject, claims to know what is the most appropriate way of investigating it.You'll that this lists at least two things involved: the omission of information and the unwarranted application of a method or principle.
The author would have us believe that Science eschews ethics. Is that true? I don’t believe it but, then, what are the ethics of Science, what is its ethical rationale, and whence comes the values upon which the ethics of Science is based?