In the fall of 2018, The US National Science Foundation (NSF) implemented a new policy on sexual harassment. A few months later, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), took a further step in the fight against harassment by announcing that researchers accused of harassment, but not yet found guilty, could nonetheless be excluded from the lists of potential reviewers of submitted projects. We also observe a recent tendency to call for the retraction of published peer-reviewed results on the basis that their conclusions are considered to go against the moral convictions of some social groups, though the lack of validity of the results has not been proven. It is certainly a legitimate question to ask whether these kinds of policies and moral critiques, which directly link the practice of science to the moral behavior of the scientists in the larger society, do not initiate a profound transformation in the relations between science and society by adding to the usually implicit norms governing the scientific community a new form of moralization of the scientists themselves. We analyze these recent events in terms of a new process of moralization of science and ask whether these new rules of conduct may lead to doing better or more robust science.
In the fall of 2018, The US National Science Foundation (NSF) implemented a new policy on sexual harassment.
No one can seriously object to the idea of sanctioning socially reprehensible behavior. However, it is certainly a legitimate question to ask whether these new NSF and the NIH policies, particularly those of NSF, which directly link the practice of science to the moral behavior of scientists, do not initiate a profound transformation in the relations between science and society by adding to the usually implicit norms governing the scientific community a new form of moralization of the scientists themselves. As mentioned, NSF and NIH policies have different consequences on science. Withdrawing a grant directly affects the production of valid science. In the case of reviewing, the policy simply excludes a person from a task that can be performed by someone else, as is the case when a conflict of interests is detected. In both cases, however, we have the use of socially arbitrary criterion of “good social behavior” applied to an activity whose specific norms, as we will see, are different from those admitted in the general social sphere.
Scientists usually consider their search for objective knowledge as a highly moral activity. But their notion of morality is more philosophical than social. It applies to the world of ideas, not to their actions in every day social life. Hence, in his autobiography, Albert Einstein insisted that “the essential in the being of a man of my type lies precisely in
This view of science was formalized in the 1940s by the American sociologist Robert K. Merton as the “normative structure of science.” According to Merton,
These standards of behavior are generally taken for granted by researchers and only become visible in situations where they are violated. Let us think here of fraud, untimely announcements of discoveries, plagiarism, etc. People thus found “guilty” are denounced and morally sanctioned by the scientific community: their papers may be retracted and they may even lose their job.
In order to underscore how the new moralization of science implicit in the recent NSF and NIH policies are indeed original and transformative, let us recall a few striking examples showing that, though such attempts at moralization of science linking grants, prizes or publications to the “good” social and moral behavior of scientists did exist in the past, they were considered inconsistent with the norm that Merton called “universalism,” In hindsight, those examples can be read as failed attempts at the moralization of science. These few examples, to which others could probably be added, also show the volatility of the moral norms now invoked to condemn scientists and they all suggest that their application could hardly lead to “better” or more valid science.
The controversy involving Marie Curie at the end of 1911, when she had just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shows the dangers of wanting to impose self-proclaimed “good” behavior on scientists in matters related to their personal private life.
At precisely the time when the Nobel committee announced the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, French gossip newspapers had revealed that Marie Curie was having a secret affair with a married man, the well-known physicist Paul Langevin. Scandalized, and speaking in the name of the Nobel Committee, the chemist Svante Arrhenius wrote Marie Curie a letter (dated December 1) asking her not to come to the official ceremony to accept that prestigious award until the accusations against her had been proven unfounded. Surprised, not to say stunned by such a demand, Marie Curie immediately replied (on December 5) that she would indeed be present at the ceremony since “the prize was awarded for [her] discovery of polonium and radium.” Above all, she recalled that “there is no relationship between [her] scientific work and the facts of [her] private life.” She also spontaneously reaffirmed a fundamental standard of science—universalism—by declaring that she “cannot accept the principle that the appreciation of the scientific value of [her] work could be influenced by libel and slander concerning [her] private life.” She concluded by saying that she was convinced that many colleagues agreed with her attitude and confirmed her attendance at the ceremony to receive her medal.
Another very interesting case illustrating the difference between the moral convictions of individual citizens and the institutional norms of science is the public reaction to the decision of the Nobel Committee to award (in 1919) the 1918 Chemistry Prize to Fritz Haber “for the synthesis of ammonia from its elements.” This work played an important role in the manufacture of artificial fertilizers and contributed to the growth of agricultural productivity. Obviously, the Nobel Committee’s decision ignored the well-known fact that Haber, a German scientist, had been active during the war in the creation and use of the first chemical gas that ushered into the world the new era of chemical warfare in 1915. Once made public, the decision of the Nobel Foundation immediately aroused indignation, especially in France and Belgium where thousands of their soldiers had been killed or crippled by chlorine and mustard gas.
As a final, but striking, example of the fact that the norms of the social system of science are closely linked to the search for truth and do not take into consideration the personal and more or less moral character of scientists as persons, let us briefly recall the strange case of the engineering professor Valery Fabrikant, who in 1992 killed four of his colleagues and injured a secretary on the Concordia University campus in Montreal. Serving a life sentence, he nevertheless continued his theoretical research and published many articles in recognized peer-reviewed academic journals, his institutional address indicating his prison cell.
The moral controversy over this case arose when an article submitted in September 1994, and published in January 1996 in the
A professor of research ethics had also opposed this censorship by advising that individual crimes are punished by society and should not influence judgments on the validity of scientific results. A law professor added that “if the content of the article is sound, it should be published,” as “it would be inconsistent with the goals of a university to attempt to suppress knowledge.”
After this incident, the journal that had refused an article by Fabrikant for reasons external to the “republic” of the scientific field, finally published another paper by him in 2004. Since then, Fabrikant, while still living out a life sentence, has continued to write scientific papers and, according to bibliometric data from the Web of Science, published nearly sixty articles between 1996 and 2021, scattered across nearly twenty different peer-reviewed journals. And though, from 2003 to 2020 the address of the author identifies him as “Prisoner 167932 D,” this has not precluded these papers from being cited over time. His career thus illustrates in a rather extreme manner how norms of conduct within science differ from the usual moral standards of the larger society.
In various ways, the cases described above illustrate how the institutionalized norm of “universalism” prohibits the consideration of personal, social, and moral characteristics of scientists in assessing the validity and quality of their scientific work. They also show the extent to which personal moral attitudes may differ from the institutionalized values of science, a mismatch that is not without creating, as we have seen, some ambivalence in the minds of scientists.
The recent process of moralization of scientists—and indirectly of science itself as a social endeavor—certainly goes against the ideal of autonomy of the republic of science promoted after World War II and theorized, for instance, by Michael Polanyi. Well-known physical chemist and philosopher of science, Polanyi was a strong proponent of the autonomy of science and opposed all ideological and political influence on it as well as the idea of planification of science proposed by his colleague John D. Bernal.
Now, that very idea of a republic of science defining its norms in a relatively autonomous manner from the larger society in order to facilitate the search for truth, seems to be giving way to a conception according to which to produce “good” science, one should also be a “good person” from a “moral” point of view, though the precise content of this new morality is hardly specified. The internal norms and values of science adapted to its specific purpose (the advancement of knowledge) would seem to be no longer considered sufficient to produce valid knowledge. This trend also suggests that validity is no longer sufficient to define legitimate knowledge and that it should, in addition, be consistent with (and be judged by) some moral standards defined by subgroups of the civil society. This trend is also visible in the imposition of so-called DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) language into more and more abstracts of grants offered by NSF as well as—in some organizations—the new evaluation criteria that dictate that research projects and student fellowships should be justified on the basis of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs).
To fully understand the complexity of the question of the new moralization of science that we have observed in recent years—especially in the United States—it is also necessary to clearly distinguish between research activity per se and the social positions that scientists may occupy and for which they must meet other kinds of criteria. For example, it is certainly legitimate to ask that, as a representative of or spokesperson for an institution, a person must have moral qualities publicly perceived as consistent with the image that the organization wishes to project. It is obvious that having opinions considered incompatible with the image and mission that an institution sets for itself is a sufficient reason to terminate any official association with that person. Since such positions have a symbolic character, the person is, in fact, chosen primarily for his or her prestige and credibility (forms of symbolic capital), which simply vanish in the event of a public controversy. This explains why biologist and Nobel laureate James Watson recently lost his honorary titles from the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Moralization can also have retrospective effects and thus affect dead scientists who have been recognized for their scientific contributions to science. As is already the case for former politicians and historical figures, scientists can now see their past scrutinized and their behavior judged for their morality according to new standards defined by moral entrepreneurs who pressure institutions to erase from public space the names of those they now judge somehow “immoral,” their mere symbolic presence on a painting, a monument, or simply a street name being considered “offensive.”
Hence, in 2015, a Canadian city decided to change the name of the street “Alexis Carrel,” the name of the winner of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, to that of a now more acceptable scientific figure (Marie Curie) after some moral entrepreneurs had discovered that the author of the 1935 best-selling essay
The same Canadian city also erased the name of another Nobel laureate, physicist Philip Lenard, after discovering (another fact well known to science historians) that he had been an active Nazi during World War II. They replaced him with Albert Einstein.
It is important to make a symmetrical analysis of moralization and note that it works both ways and thus can have the effect of rehabilitating scientists and giving new public visibility to characters who had remained unknown to the general public despite their important (and generally recognized) contributions to science. The most spectacular case is probably that of the mathematician Alan Turing, whose current public image certainly owes much to the action of moral entrepreneurs. Although he has always been recognized by scientists for his fundamental contributions to mathematics and computer science, he only became a prominent public figure after it had been pointed out that he was homosexual and that, for this reason, he had been convicted in 1952 of “gross indecency” and forced to undergo chemical hormonal treatment. This conviction and harsh treatment may even have contributed to his committing suicide in 1954. Half a century later, a petition forced the British Prime Minister to apologize in 2009 on behalf of the British government for the measures taken by the State against Turing. A second petition was then filed asking for a full pardon, which was eventually granted by the UK’s Queen herself in December 2013.
While it is certainly legitimate to question, on an ethical or ideological basis, the declarations and acts of scientists, the weight which tends to be given to these kinds of denunciations could go against the inherent logic of the production of knowledge.
By deciding that the social behavior of scientists will now affect their chances of continuing to do science—by obtaining research grants or evaluating projects and, one day perhaps, even publishing papers—the NSF and the NIH, as well as other government granting bodies, are extending their mission well beyond their traditional role of gatekeeper, that is to say, guardians of the quality of scientific production. By explicitly opening the frontiers of the scientific field to give legitimacy to claims of various pressure groups putting forward their own conception of moral purity, these institutions maybe entering slippery terrain. While being funded by the NSF or the NIH is seen as a sign of scientific excellence, it seems that one now also has to be perceived as a good moral agent to even get a grant. The obligation to write a DEI statement in grant application testifies to the emergence of a new form of loyalty oath, reminiscent and analogous—despite its different content and aims—to the one the House Committee on Un-American Activities and its president Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to impose on American university professors in 1950.
According to psychologist Paul Rozin, “One factor that seems to encourage “success” [of a moralization campaign] is the association of a stigmatized or marginal group with the activity in question.”
The activity of moral entrepreneurs who try to impose their particular conception of the “good life” on all social activities, constitute in our opinion a form of ideological regression that goes against the relative—and always precarious—autonomy of all cultural fields, an autonomy hardly won over time against all forms of censorship.
As the road to hell is paved with good intentions, only time will tell whether the current tendency to impose the values of self-proclaimed moral entrepreneurs on all scientists and other creators (artists, writers, etc.) will really contribute to the production of “better” science, better novels, and better movies through the formation of “better” persons. The history of the relationships between the arts, the sciences, and changing moral values and ideologies unfortunately suggests that this is unlikely.
The author thanks the two anonymous reviewers for their comments. This paper develops and updates arguments first presented in a French essay published in
News Release 18-082. (September 19, 2018). “NSF announces new measures to protect research community from harassment.”
Kaiser, Jocelyn. (March 27, 2019). “NIH may bar peer reviewers accused of sexual harassment,”
Einstein, Albert. (1949). “Autobiographical notes,” in Paul Arthur Schlipp (ed.),
Merton, Robert K. (1973).
Charles, Daniel. (2005).
Spurgeon, David. (June 6, 1996). “Paper from jailed professor stirs debate over publication.”
Ibid.
Polanyi, Michael. (1962). “The republic of science: Its political and economic theory,”
For an analysis of the rise of DEI language in NSF grants, see Rasmussen, Leif. (November 16, 2021). “Increasing politicization and homogeneity in scientific funding: An analysis of NSF grants, 1990–2020,” Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology,” Report No. 4. For details of the UN’S SDGs, see
For an analysis of retractation of papers on moral grounds, see Gingras, Yves. (2022). “Towards a moralization of bibliometrics? A response to Kyle Siler.”
BBC. (January 13, 2019). “James Watson: Scientist loses titles after claims over race.”
CBC News. (June 10, 2015).
Alison Flood. (June 12, 2018). “Einstein’s travel diaries reveal ‘shocking’ xenophobia.”
CBC News, (December 23, 2013). “Alan Turing granted royal pardon for gay sex conviction.”
Stewart, George R. (1950).
Rozin, Paul. (May 1999). “The process of moralization.”
Campbell, Bradley and Jason Manning. (2018).
Subbaraman, Nidhi. (June 25, 2020). “NIH’s new sexual-harassment rules are still too weak, say critics.”
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1975). “The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions for the progress of reason.”