The myth of neutrality in science has got to go

A few resources for articulating and embracing the personal values you bring to your professional work

If you’ve followed my work for long, you’re familiar with my stance that the myth of neutrality in science is just that—a harmful yet persistent narrative that insists:

• neutrality is a collective ideal,

• humans can be neutral,

• your capacity for neutrality reflects your intellect and fit in society and science,

• your capacity for neutrality is intrinsic, though performative neutrality can be trained (ahem indoctrinated) into you if necessary.

I’m not saying anything new here. Critiques of this harmful hogwash have been issued for decades (if not centuries).

And yet, here we are, still training and evaluating scientists as if our neutrality is going to somehow keep us above the distastful mess of public distrust in science, political backlash, active revenge against science (which isn’t at all new, by the way; just talk to Galileo!), and the current, on-going effort to dismantle science funding and research in the U.S.

So many people, for so long, have said that science is social, not neutra…