What it means to stand up for science

My take on what we should stand for to maintain trust and increase prosperity.

Today there were nationwide “Stand Up for Science” rallies. The organization website suggests that we explain why we stand up for science. Here is my take.

I studied for my PhD at the University of Rochester, whose motto is meliora, a Latin adjective that the University translates to mean “ever better”. When I first heard the motto, I associated it with the more familiar ameliorate–to make better. If I were to sum up what it means to stand up for science, it would be that motto: meliora. When we stand up for science, we should be standing up for a better life for all. More specifically, we should stand up for the following:

1. Science as the long-term engine economic progress.

200 years ago, most people lived on less than the modern equivalent of two dollars a day. The reason why more than 90% of us today are not that poor is because of science-driven technological progress that thoroughly transformed the material conditions of human life. No amount of education, hard work, free markets, or government reform would have achieved this transformation without scientific advances that increased crop yields, reduced the burden of disease, and are the basis of the materials and technologies involved in modern transportation and communication. We should stand up for the institutions and approach to knowledge that make up this engine of progress.

2. Public trust that makes modern science possible.

Those of us who work in science are able to do so thanks to decades of public trust underlying the state-funded work that is the seedbed of the scientific enterprise. That public trust is founded on the expectation of meliora–that what we do as scientists can, over the long run, make all of our fellow citizens’ lives better. We can’t control the wise or unwise decisions of politicians that have the biggest impact on how broadly prosperity is shared. But as scientists we can stand up for the idea that our work is for everyone, regardless of partisan affiliation, for minorities and majorities. Standing up for that principle means acknowledging that people are different, and that, to take the example of health research, we do need to study differences between sexes, genders, races, etc. Everyone deserves evidence-based medicine.

3. Honesty, rigor, and a commitment to evidence.

The reason science has been the engine of progress is because, when its institutions are healthy, it is reliable. Those of us who work in science need to be absolutely clear about our commitment to the values that make science work. It means speaking out against fraud, arguing with but not canceling dissenting views, not shelving negative results, especially not with the excuse that we did so to avoid “weaponization” of the results, and not trying to pretend that low quality studies supporting our prior views are in fact strong evidence. It means not our pulling punches against cranks, like the one who now runs HHS, but it also means standing up against attempts to foist on science unreliable epistemic values that come from more radical corners of the humanities–such as risible claims that “indigenous” knowledge should be taught alongside science.

4. A willingness to be accountable for our work.

We should be willing to answer honest questions. Yes, the world is filled with bad-faith trolls who are trying to discredit science, and they should be treated as such. But the attitude we shouldn’t take is something I saw on a sign in a photo of a protest– “In science we trust.” “Trust the science” is too often used as a way to brush off criticism and avoid answering tough questions. While politicians, journalists, and the general public do not have our disciplinary expertise, we owe it to them to explain what we’re doing and take critical questions seriously. One of the worst recent examples is the effort to shut down debate over the origins of Covid. Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith describes what happened as “a degree of insistence and refusal to doubt that I think is very discouraging… an attempt to pre-label future dissent as incompetence or deception.” Every one of us with a Ph.D. in science was trained to answer tough questions. We owe the public more than just “trust the science.”

5. Stand up for our students and colleagues.

I am as much an unbeliever as Richard Dawkins, but I greatly appreciate my wife’s church. Each week, when the congregation is invited to come up for communion, the pastor finishes his lines by says “all are welcome.” And he means it. I’m sure many churches do this, but I know for a fact that a great many don’t. All should be welcome in science too, and we should stand up for them. I know we’re not going to fix misogyny and racism with platitudes, but at least as individuals we can make it clear that our student, technician, postdoc, and faculty colleagues belong here, that they are evaluated on how they do science and not on who they are. Almost everyone here could be making more money doing something else. From a purely mercenary perspective, we get a better scientific workforce when we draw talent from all across society. From a humane perspective, we should defend our community from malicious outside efforts to label our non-white colleagues as DEI hires, or to deny respect to our gay and trans colleagues.