You may have heard about the article “In Defense of Merit and Science” that was rejected by “several prominent mainstream journals” before eventually being published by the newish Journal of Controversial Ideas.  Well, I’ve read the paper and it’s a trash fire of a document which thoroughly deserved every single one of its rejections.  In fact, it is such a trash heap, one suspects that it was submitted to these journals in full knowledge it would be rejected so that the authors could then get a New York Times journalist to write about it under the headline A Paper that Says Science Should Be Impartial Was Rejected by Major Journals.  You Can’t Make This Up.  Classic grievance merchant tactic.

The first thing to understand about this article is that it is not a paper which is “scientific” in the sense of taking a body of evidence (old or new), subjecting it to a set of investigative or evaluative techniques common to a recognized discipline, and coming to some sort of conclusion based on that evidence.  Rather, it is a polemic.  It uses things which are superficially scholarly like footnotes, but there is nothing in the approach to evidence used here which rises to anywhere in the same postal code as “systematic”.  Which, you know, fine: there’s a lot of similarly weak stuff out there.  But that’s the stuff that gets rejected by good journals.  Like this article was.

The second thing to understand about this article is that it is not about “science” in the sense of the scientific method or scientific publishing; rather, it is primarily about hiring and promotion criteria in academic science.  The authors want you to conflate the two ideas – indeed, the entire point of this article is to subtly erase the difference between things which undermine the scientific method, thus destroying much of the basis of the modern economy and society, and things which undermine the ability of (mainly) white men to stay atop the hierarchy of the scientific profession.  And what they are really talking about when they use the term “merit” is, ‘the current system for deciding who gets in to top science programs/institutions and who gets hired and promoted as an academic scientist.’ 

The paper certainly starts out in a grandiose fashion: “Merit is a central pillar of liberal epistemology, humanism, and democracy … This perspective documents the ongoing attempts to undermine the core principles of liberal epistemology and to replace merit with non-­scientific, politically motivated criteria.”  From there, we get to “merit” being equated with the scientific method, which “has proven an effective tool for revealing objective truths about the natural world.”  However, “These core principles, which have served us well for centuries, are under attack by ideologies originating in postmodernism and Critical Theory, versions of which reject objective reality in favor of ‘multiple narratives’ promulgated by different identity groups and ‘alternative ways of knowing.’”  Predictably, the example of Trofim Lysenko and his role in the destruction of the biological sciences in the Soviet Union under Stalin, is trotted out.

And it goes on like this.  Merit = science = truth = good; post-modernism and anything with the word critical in front of it = bad.

Then, very quickly, and without explanation, the paper pivots to talking about “merit” exclusively in scholarly career terms – that is, how to measure article output and workload.  Not in the least about which kinds of articles and which kinds of science get published in which journals and why – that, as near as I can tell, is largely taken for granted as being fair.  No, just career goals. 

Then, another pivot.  There are references to a couple of cherry-picked articles about de-colonization in global health which make some extreme claims about the need to eliminate the field entirely, to show that concepts of de-colonization might cause harm to scientific initiatives (the selectivity is important here: there are serious ways of examining a field through article word-searches, and the authors deliberately choose not to use them, because they would show exactly how unrepresentative these articles are).  A six-year-old article in Nature is quoted misleadingly and massively out- of-context to try to show that de-colonization efforts would do massive damage to the field of pharmacology.  It’s a hit job.  And then, just as quickly, we’re back to hiring again.

Following all this comes a long list of complaints about scientific institutions acknowledging the science has a problem with systematic racism, a charge the authors refute partly by refusing to engage with what the word “systemic” means in this context and partly by pulling the ol’ “Look!  Asians are Doing Great!  No Racism Here, Obviously!” trick.

Look, I told you it was a trash fire.

Then, we’re back to hiring/promotion again and a seemingly endless series of complaints about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion gone mad: requiring equal numbers of male and female candidates in short-lists for hiring and prizes, etc. etc.  What comes in for the most criticism is the use of DEI statements: that is, essays that faculty must write – either as part of their job proposal, or promotion application, or in competitions for research funds – which outline how the individual (or sometimes the project) will enact DEI principles in their work.  These can no doubt sometimes seem highly performative in some contexts.  But the thought behind them – that true inclusion is hard, and it’s important to know that academic staff understand that they have responsibilities with respect to outreach and inclusion of students and young scholars from under-represented backgrounds – is an important one.  So, while there are some arguments to be made about the use of these kinds of statements, raging against them quite as loudly as these authors do, and comparing them to Soviet-era ideological tests, is a tell.

Anyways, I should stop giving this article oxygen.  It’s polemic, not scholarship, and it’s not even a very good polemic.  It claims to be about science and the scientific method but is about DEI and academic hiring.  Anyone who points to this article and says “Look, Science is being overrun by fanatics!” – as the New York Times did – is either unable to do close reading or is being played or is a reactionary.  Don’t be one of them.