From an article in Science magazine by journalist Rachael Zamzow, we learn that many social scientists believe that a published paper should include in its author details a “’positionality statement’ from each author describing how their identity might influence their work”, declaring “for example, race, ethnicity, geographic location, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability status, and career level”. Defending such a practice, one author maintains that it is “an invitation to think more broadly about what your role as a researcher is”. To illustrate the supposed benefits from such declarations, an imaginary case is offered: “If you’re an astronomer, for example, think about where your telescope is, she says. ‘Are you part of that community? Is that telescope put there with knowledge of the people who call that place their land?’”
We believe that although some might find this an interesting question for a sociological or ethnographic study, it has nothing to do with, for example, the value of a report concerning a heavenly body discovered using that telescope. How a disclosure of the astronomer’s sexual orientation would add anything to the understanding of the matter by a reader of the article in an astronomy journal is puzzling, and sounds rather like a bad joke…
The call for “positionality statements” reveals some basic confusion:
1. One thing is the (interesting) description and analysis of the sociological and historical settings in which scientific endeavors are located and undertaken;
2. Another thing is the results of research contained in a scientific paper on whatever topic.
In any case, if the aim is “to think more broadly about what your role as a researcher is”, this is self-reflection that concerns the writer, not the reader, and the latter therefore derives no interesting information from personal details regarding the author(s). On the contrary, such knowledge could – more or less (un)consciously – bias the reader’s judgement regarding the content of scientific papers. Borrowing and repositioning John Rawls’ famous expression, one may argue that readers should be kept behind a “veil of ignorance” as regards the author(s). This is why a basic principle of peer review – which, notwithstanding its defects, is a pillar of evaluation/advancement in sciences – is anonymity (“blindness”).
Thus, our aim should be to reaffirm the intrinsic nature of scientific research as a quest for objective truths – call it a basic Popperian stance – regardless of subjective conditions and orientations. In the ideal, normative prospect established several decades ago by Robert Merton, the second rule for the processes of good research (the five prescriptions are popularly known with the acronym CUDOS) is Universalism. The concept may be understood in a double sense. First, it prescribes that research results (laws of nature, facts of history, etc.) are endowed with explanatory power regardless of the historical/social context of their discovery: for example, heliocentrism could have been ascertained as true by Aztec astronomers, rather than by Copernicus, a Polish mathematician who was probably building on Islamic Middle Age theoretical heritage; and/or by several other scientists, at anytime and anywhere. Second, Universalism was identified as an essential component of science by Merton precisely because it makes clear that anybody may contribute to scientific discoveries, whatever their gender, nationality, etc. For some observers, “science is somehow disreputable because it is the province of European white bourgeois males”: yet, it has been rightly replied that “Mendel was such, he was even an Augustinian monk, but he got it right about the wrinkled peas; and it would not have mattered if he had been a black handicapped Spanish-speaking lesbian atheist.” That is a truism that epistemic relativists seem unable to grasp.
By Philosophyink – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52038667
The content of this article, written by Giovanni Molteni Tagliabue, has been endorsed by the following scientists (names of institutions are for identification purposes only)
– Giovanni Molteni Tagliabue – Como, Italy, Independent researcher in political science and socio-political/legislative aspects of ag biotech
– Dorian S. Abbot – University of Chicago, IL, USA, Associate Professor of the Geophysical Sciences
– Alexander T. Baugh – Swarthmore College, PA, USA, Associate Professor of Biology
– Barry L. Bentley – Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK, Reader in Bioengineering
– David J. Bertioli – University of Georgia, USA, Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator and Professor, Institute of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics
– Enrico Bucci – Temple University, Philadelphia, USA, Adjunct Professor in Systems Biology, Sbarro Health Research Organization
– John Bullock – Bennington College, VT, USA, Professor of Chemistry
– Pellegrino Conte – University of Palermo, Italy, Full Professor, Agricultural Chemistry
– Jerry Coyne – The University of Chicago, IL, USA, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolution
– Adrian Dubock – Member & Executive Secretary, Golden Rice Humanitarian Board
– James E. Enstrom – University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, Retired Research Professor (Epidemiology)
– Jon Entine – Genetic Literacy Project website, Cincinnati, OH, USA, Executive Director
– Samuel Furfari, professor of geopolitics of energy, Université Libre de Bruxelles, ESCP London
– Giorio Giovanni – Metapontum Agrobios Research Centre, Metaponto (MT), Italy, Senior Principal Scientist
– Jacqueline Gottlieb – Columbia University, NY, USA, Professor, Department of Neuroscience
– Jonathan Gressel – Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, Professor, Plant & Environmental Sciences
– Robert H. Guinn – College of the Desert, CA, USA, Professor, Chemistry
– Lakshman Guruswamy – University of Colorado, Boulder, Professor of Law Emeritus
– Jason E. Hammonds – Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases
– Nurit Haspel – University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA, Professor of Computer Science
– Geoff Horsman – Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada, Associate Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry
– Anna Krylov – University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, USC Associates Chair in Natural Sciences and Professor of Chemistry
– Marcel Kuntz – University of Grenoble-Alpes, France, Director of Research at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
– Klaus-Dieter Jany – Association of Genomics and Genetic Engineering e.V. (WGG), Chairman, Linkenheim-Hochstetten (Germany)
– Brian Leiter – University of Chicago, Professor of Jurisprudence; Director, Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values
– Luana S. Maroja – Williams College, MA, USA, Professor of Biology, Chair of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Program
– Alan McHughen – University of California, Riverside, USA, Botany and Plant Sciences, expert in agri-food biotech regulation
– Axel Meyer – University of Konstanz, Germany, Professor of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology
– Ethan L. Miller – University of California Santa Cruz, CA, USA, Professor Emeritus, Computer Science & Engineering
– Henry I. Miller, M.Sc., M.D. – Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow, American Council on Science and Health, New York, USA; Founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology
– Sadredin Moosavi – Rochester Community & Technical College, MN, USA, Faculty of Science
– Piero Morandini – University of Milan, Italy, Associate Professor of Plant Physiology
– Ernest Mund – Research director of the FNRS, Professor Emeritus Univ cath of Louvain
– Robert Paarlberg – Harvard Kennedy School, Associate, Sustainability Science
– Channapatna Prakash, Tuskegee University, USA, Dean, Arts & Sciences
– Marisol Quintanilla – Michigan State University, MI, USA, Nematologist
– Gerard Rass – Agronomist – Ecologist (retired) – INAPG Institut National Agronomique de Paris Grignon (1972). General Secretary of the Global Conservation Agriculture Network
– Catherine Regnault-Roger – Emeritus University Professor at the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour (E2S UPPA) – member of the French Academy of Agriculture and the National Academy of Pharmacy
– Ilya Reviakine – University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA, Department of Bioengineering
– Keith Riles – University of Michigan, MI, USA, H. Richard Crane Professor of Physics
– Richard John Roberts – Chief Scientific Officer, New England Biolabs, Ipswich, USA, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicin
– Michel De Rougemont – Not employed, educated (Chem eng. Dr sc tech), independent.
And with no particular intersectionalities
– Paul Roundy – University at Albany, Albany, NY, USA, Professor of Atmospheric Science
– Douglas N. Rutledge, Guest researcher at : Université Paris-Saclay, Faculté de Pharmacie, France, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, France, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Brazil
– Abhishek Saha – Queen Mary University of London, UK, Professor of Mathematics
– Angelo Santino – Head of Unit, Institute of Sciences of Food Production, C.N.R., Unit of Lecce; Vice President, European Plant Science Organization (EPSO)
– Julia Schaletzky – University of California, Berkeley, Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases
– Gregory Shearer – Penn State University, PA, USA, Professor of Nutrition and Physiology; Chair, Integrative and Biomedical Physiology Program
– Michael Shulman – University of San Diego, CA, USA, Associate Professor of Mathematics
– Judith Totman Parrish – University of Idaho, MS, USA, Professor Emerita, Department of Geological Sciences
– Roberto Tuberosa – University of Bologna, Italy, Professor in Biotechnology Applied to Plant Breeding, Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences
– Ignazio Verde – Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA), Rome, Italy, Research Director
– François Vazeille – CNRS France. Former Research Director, Laboratory of Physics Clermont-Ferrand and CERN Geneva (CH)
– Jean-Philippe Vuillez, MD, PhD, Professor of biophysics and nuclear medicine, University Grenoble Alpes, France
– Guy Waksman, Member of the French Agricultural Academy
– Robert Wager – Vancouver Island University, Canada, Molecular biology, Biochemistry
– James West – Vanderbilt University Medical Center, TN, USA, Professor of Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine
References
Fox, Robin. 1995. “State of the Art/Science in Anthropology.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 775: 327-45.
Merton, Robert K. 1942. Science and Democratic Social Structure. Ch. XIX in Social Theory and Social Structure, p. 604-615. New York: The Free Press, 1968; chapter originally published as Science and Technology in a Democratic Order. Journal of Legal and Political Sociology, 1942, 1:115-126
Zamzow, Rachel. Scientists clash over ‘positionality statements’. Science, 3 November 2023, 382(6670):501.
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