Ideological Commitments Undermine Institutional Credibility

Exploring Nature Human Behavior's editorial "Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans"

Photo by Giammarco on Unsplash

The journal Nature Human Behavior recently published an editorial entitled “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans” with the subtitle “New ethics guidance addresses potential harms for human population groups who do not participate in research but may be harmed by its publication.” This editorial was making the rounds on Twitter, and some writers I know published responses (Bo Winegard, Razib Khan, Noah Carl). The surprising aspect of this editorial is not that a truth-seeking institution would have ideological commitments but rather that the journal would clearly and explicitly state what sort of articles it will exclude for social and political reasons.

As with other progressive political censorship, the guiding principle is harm avoidance. In these cases, it is not actual physical harm that is directly caused. These harms are either potential harm or emotional harm, and these types of harm only apply to the groups deemed oppressed from the perspective of Critical Social Justice. They do not care about a Christian offended by evolutionary biologists for undermining the theory of intelligent design or historians for undermining a historical case for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Harms can arise as a direct result of the conduct of research — for instance, injury to human participants in the course of participating in a research project; unnecessary suffering of non-human animals as a result of experimentation; material compromise of tangible heritage; ecosystem disruption etc. Harms can also arise indirectly, as a result of the publication of a research project or a piece of scholarly communication – for instance, stigmatization of a vulnerable human group or potential use of the results of research for unintended purposes (e.g., public policies that undermine human rights or misuse of information to threaten public health).

Not undermining human rights is a worthwhile goal. “[Respecting] the dignity and rights of human research participants” is a worthwhile goal. Preventing the “stigmatization of a vulnerable human group” is a worthwhile goal. And preventing the “misuse of information to threaten public health” is too. But these goals are going to manifest in discrimination against articles with politically incorrect findings, despite their statement that “[e]nsuring…no research is discouraged simply because it may be socially or academically controversial, is as important as preventing harm.” These goals conflict and one will have to be prioritized. It appears that the ethical commitment has won out over the commitment to protecting controversial research. The editorial explains its willingness to refuse publication:

Regardless of content type (research, review or opinion) and, for research, regardless of whether a research project was reviewed and approved by an appropriate institutional ethics committee, editors reserve the right to request modifications to (or correct or otherwise amend post-publication), and in severe cases refuse publication of (or retract post-publication):

1. Content that is premised upon the assumption of inherent biological, social, or cultural superiority or inferiority of one human group over another based on race, ethnicity, national or social origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, political or other beliefs, age, disease, (dis)ability, or other socially constructed or socially relevant groupings (hereafter referred to as socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings).

2. Content that undermines — or could reasonably be perceived to undermine — the rights and dignities of an individual or human group on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings.

3. Content that includes text or images that directly or indirectly disparage a person or group on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings.

4. Submissions that embody singular, privileged perspectives, which are exclusionary of a diversity of voices in relation to socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings, and which purport such perspectives to be generalisable and/or assumed.

I have little doubt that a motivated editor or reviewer could find a reason for a controversial finding to be regarded as either asserting inferiority, undermining dignities, indirectly disparaging a group, or embodying a singular privileged perspective. There is ample room for charitable interpretations of these criteria in order to censor unwanted findings. The editorial even encourages researchers to promote equality between the sexes after a long section describing sex and gender distinction.

Researchers are encouraged to promote equality between men and women in their academic research, which by nature should be grounded on the recognition of merit, competences and creativity, regardless of any other personal attributes or orientation.

Sexist, misogynistic and/or anti-LGBTQ+ content is ethically objectionable. Regardless of content type (research, review or opinion) and, for research, regardless of whether a research project was reviewed and approved by appropriate ethics specialists, editors may raise with the authors concerns regarding potentially sexist, misogynistic, and/or anti-LGBTQ+ assumptions, implications or speech in their submission; engage external ethics experts to provide input on such issues as part of the peer review process; or request modifications to (or correct or otherwise amend post-publication), and in severe cases refuse publication of (or retract post-publication) sexist, misogynistic, and/ or anti-LGBTQ+ content, using the guiding criteria I–IV in the section Research on human populations (see above).

These guidelines provide a means of enforcing a fundamental tenet of progressivism: the assumption of human sameness. In law, this assumption of sameness is one of “the guiding presuppositions of affirmative action doctrine—that, but for discrimination, statistical parity among racial and ethnic groups would be the norm” (Detlefsen, 1993). This belief is not just that groups should be the same before the law but that all groups of people are the same in all ways that matter. That is, except for the oppressor class, whose behavior is the source of the social injustices which create disparities. This view persists through social pressure and conformity because it is largely the product of ideology rather than unbiased empirical analysis. Perhaps most importantly, this tenet is enforced in the most prestigious truth-seeking institution—the university. Charles Murray refers to this dogma as “the orthodoxy” in his book Human Diversity (2020):

The core doctrine of the orthodoxy in the social sciences is a particular understanding of human equality. I don’t mean equality in the sense of America’s traditional ideal—all are equal in the eyes of God, have equal inherent dignity, and should be treated equally under the law—but equality in the sense of sameness. Call it the sameness premise: In a properly run society, people of all human groupings will have similar life outcomes. Individuals might have differences in abilities, the orthodoxy (usually) acknowledges, but groups do not have inborn differences in the distributions of those abilities, except for undeniable ones such as height, upper body strength, and skin color. Inside the cranium, all groups are the same.

Many may object that those who disagree with the sameness premise are not scientifically rigorous, and dissenters are the ones who are actually ideologically motivated. For example, they may argue that Charles Murray has libertarian ideological commitments that influence his thinking on social and scientific issues. Let us set aside the question of whether or not the orthodoxy is scientifically justified.

The issue with using scientific institutions to enforce ideological commitments is that the credibility of the institution is lessened. If all scientific institutions united in opposition to attacks against the sameness premise, then it would be epistemically irresponsible to look to scientific authorities when it came to issues affecting “socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings.” Many activist scientists want to have their cake and eat it too. They cannot reasonably both exclude findings for moral reasons and attack “immoral” findings for lacking institutional approval with the implication that exclusion is for reasons of quality.

People who are not scientifically minded are left in the position of having to evaluate the quality of research which contradicts the approved narrative. Many recognize that certain viewpoints are privileged while others are held to different standards or excluded entirely. Trust in institutions declines because it is epistemically rational to reduce trust in truth-seeking institutions with strong ideological motivations and censorious attitudes. Many people have independently discovered this heuristic from Eric Kaufmann:

Surely the issue here is which part of the establishment and what their claim is. I generally trust experts who a) base claims on the scientific method and b) where claims do not touch on race, gender or sexuality. If a) and b) are true, trust the experts. If not, be skeptical

Even if you fully believe that the sameness premise is correct, you must incorporate the fact that there is intense pressure to conform. A progressive will rightly recognize that a conservative think tank may be biased because it dedicates itself to furthering conservative thinking and members are vetted based on their ideological commitment to conservatism. Likewise, progressives should recognize that academic institutions can suffer from a similar progressive bias because there are similar ideological filters and pressures (see Kaufmann, 2021).

One could argue that this sort of political filter will not cause bias because bigoted beliefs are false and egalitarian beliefs are true, so an ideological commitment is acceptable. This only works if we are very confident that reality is egalitarian, in which case the ideological filter isn’t particularly necessary. Merely excluding studies of low research quality would result in the publication of research that largely conforms to the orthodoxy. It would not be worth the cost of credibility. However, researchers are not entirely certain of the sameness premise. There is much more we can learn about humanity, and there is scientific research providing ample reason to doubt the orthodoxy (see Murray, 2020).

It could be the case that we have strong a priori reasons to believe that reality is egalitarian and does not “undermine human dignity.” One of the most commonly believed reasons might be that it is unjust for nature not to be egalitarian. Anomaly and Winegard (2020) call this sort of belief Cosmic Egalitarianism—“different populations do not differ biologically on socially valued traits, because such differences would be cosmically unjust.” I believe this view seems more compelling than it actually is because it is comforting to believe in it, similar to how it is comforting to think that justice is served after we all die and the virtuous are rewarded. But there is little reason to think the processes of cultural and genetic evolution would make all groups of people and cultures exactly the same in all ways that matter to twenty-first-century progressives. The world is incredibly inegalitarian. Some people are born deaf and blind. Some children die before the age of five. Many virtuous people suffer tremendously, while wicked people are never punished. The world violates our sense of fairness constantly.

It is also likely the case that people accept Cosmic Egalitarianism because they view it as a necessary assumption to warrant equal treatment of all groups. Anomaly and Winegard (2020) formulate a version of this belief that they call the egalitarian fallacy as follows:

1. People should be treated as moral equals.

2. If people should be treated as moral equals, then people possess equal amounts of whatever traits give them equal moral standing. Therefore,

3. People possess equal amounts of whatever traits give them equal moral standing.

Despite many progressives committing this fallacy, few progressives who accept the sameness premise and legal equality would abandon legal equality as a desirable goal if they discovered the sameness premise was false. If a progressive were to discover that women were more inclined toward caring for children for genetic reasons rather than cultural reasons, I believe that very few would come to believe that women should be forced to stay at home with their children. Many may believe these views are strongly connected because the type of person who believes women should be forced to stay at home would see it as a woman’s natural skill, but these sorts of moral beliefs do not necessarily follow from these empirical beliefs. We can believe in a natural right not to be coerced into the home regardless of average genetic predispositions.

I am reminded of some Christians who accept moral realism and the existence of God but argue that these are inextricably combined. They argue that without God, there are no moral truths. They say there is no compelling reason not to murder, rape, and steal. But surely, few church-attending Christians would engage in any of those actions if they lost their faith. Presumably, they have an intuitive sense of moral goodness that guides them.

If we have a strong commitment to the belief that women should have the right to determine what sort of role they want to take in society, whether it be a mother or CEO, we do not need arguments about absolute sameness. In fact, we should want to avoid such arguments if our moral beliefs are not contingent on them, even more so if we suspect that these empirical facts could potentially be false. This holds for all socially relevant groups.

Using institutional authority to suppress research will diminish institutional credibility in the present and especially in the future if the censors turn out to be incorrect. We saw this occur with COVID-19 much more quickly. Thanks to widespread internet access, the public now has access to plenty of information. People can investigate topics that they find interesting or even conduct research and write articles. While there will be numerous cranks, there will also be thoughtful and persuasive dissidents. And even if all American journals acted cooperatively to suppress dissent from the orthodoxy, it is not at all likely that all nations on the planet would work alongside them. Other countries do not care so much about egalitarianism. My advice to Nature Human Behavior is to get rid of these guidelines and maintain neutrality. My advice to those concerned about research undermining rights is to develop persuasive ethical cases as to why rights are not contingent on what is published in journals like Nature Human Behavior. It should not be difficult.

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