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Oppression of Revolutionary Ideas in Science

We often view scientific inquiry as a meritocratic enterprise. Science is imagined as the battlefield of ideas, each tested through empiricism and rationalism, culminating in a slow, steady march towards progress for humanity. The imagery of war is intentional here: just as soldiers are indoctrinated of the evil of their enemies, scientists are led to perceive opposing ideas as fallacious, and that the only enemy of scientific inquiry is ignorance.

But scientists aren’t omniscient, and the practice of science does not automatically lead to the enshrinement of the most rational, empirically valid statements. As an example, heliocentrism had been proposed as a model by scholars of several civilisations, dating back to Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BCE, but wasn’t accepted as scientific fact until the 17th century⁴³. Biases and power structures in the scientific establishment opress ideas that would otherwise have been acknowledged, validated, and even celebrated.

Scientists, historians of science, sociologists of scientific knowledge²⁴, and philosophers of science have long reflected on how some ideas come to be accepted as scientific dogma¹, while others have been dismissed. Most agree that social and political structures in science play an extremely important role in determining scientific change⁴⁴ ². Yet, the established power structures that exacerbate the oppression of revolutionary ideas¹ are rarely acknowledged by scientists, and instead are often held up as exemplars! Thus, they remain as bedrock in our institutions that train scientists, produce scientific results, and disseminate scientific ideas.

Who is allowed to and encouraged to pursue science, and how we teach science is incredibly discriminatory³. While a lot of the discrimination is inherited from societal heriarchies such as race⁶, socioeconomic status⁵, nationality⁸ and gender⁷ (which universities have the ability to counteract but fail to⁴) the discrimination goes much beyond that.

Universities view researchers as authorities who possess the power and responsibility of educating students. Instructors are viewed as transmitters of information that students are expected to imbibe⁹. This notion of transmission of knowledge and understanding is inherently flawed in its conception of learning¹¹, as evidence from decades of pedagogy makes it clear that knowledge isn’t transmitted, but constructed¹⁰: students learn by doing and actively engaging with the material²⁵, and in a more fundamental way than solving problem sets and writing essays¹⁵. Yet, because of the incentives inherent in our institutions, universities are failing their students²⁶.

Students should be given more agency over what and how they decide to study¹³. Instruction in the university as it is designed currently is inherently oppressive as it presupposes that only instructors know what students can and should learn¹⁶, and students lack the faculties to pursue their own interests in a subject⁹. The role of instructors should be as facilitators scaffolding learning for students and encouraging revolutionary exploration, rather than dictating what students must learn¹².

Further, the notion of the instructor as an enlightened figure diminishes the student from the beginning as an ignorant passive participant¹⁴. Instructors stand to learn more from students than students from instructors, if only because students outnumber instructors. Further, through their lived experiences, students offer several perspectives that instructors can benefit from, as long as they care to listen. These perspectives carry the potential to bring a change in the set of scientific problems and the way in which they are attacked.¹

Though some of the agency is restored once students who are lucky to be admitted into their desired place of inquiry enter higher levels of education, such as doctoral programs, their ability to ask questions is then dictated by professors¹⁸, their departments and funding¹⁷.

Funding dictates research²⁰, and universities reward researchers who obtain grants with tenure, promotions, salary increases, relief in administrative and teaching duties. This leads to the abandonment of promising but risky ideas in favour of more “fundable” projects, and even the incentivization of questionable research practices and fraudulent behaviour³⁶. Further, funding is biased by race³⁹, gender⁴⁰ and institutional size⁴¹. These issues are most exacerbated for pre-tenure faculty, as tenure is often contingent on external funding³⁷.

Funding itself biases scientific results itself to conform to the expectations of the funding institution, which may be from the profit-seeking industry, private foundations, or government agencies like the Department of Defence³⁸.

Further, even one of the most celebrated aspects of science, collaboration, is full of biases that exclude women³³ and under-represented ethnicities³⁵. Thus excluding them from one of the key elements of the scientific process, and silencing their perspectives.

Peer review is often held up as the “gold standard” for publication²¹, and it is the process by which grants are allocated, academics are promoted, textbooks are written, and Nobel prizes are won²². But peer review is riddled with problems that lay unaddressed.

Reliant upon the vagaries of human judgement, the objectivity, reliability, and consistency of peer review are subject to question²³. Studies show reviewers’ views tend to show levels of agreement only slightly better than chance²⁷. Further, peer review fails in its primary duty: preventing errors and fraud from entering the scientific literature²³. The frequency of retraction is strongly correlated with the journal’s impact factor²⁸. And reviewers and editors are not accountable and fundamentally subvert the process of science itself²³.

Further, there are very significant and well-documented social and publication biases, ranging from gender, nationality, institutional affiliation, language and discipline²³. There are also biases due to nepotism²⁹, confirmation biases that prevent innovative methods from emerging, and a preference for complexity over simplicity in methodology²³. Thus, by limiting the review process to a few individuals who are offered no incentives²² to serve the role with thought and care²¹, peer review is effectively only a mechanism for gatekeeping²³.

Even the single goal that almost all scientists will agree upon, universal open access, hasn’t been achieved only because scientists keep going back to predatory journals that prevent³² and subvert³¹ open access because they find validation in these journals. The further goal of open review, in whatever shape or form, isn’t even addressed or sought²³.

And what is achieved after the peer-review process? A static publication that can rarely be edited, and leaves little space for dialogue. If one has to be an “expert” to write a response to a publication that must itself go through peer review, or have to engage in months of research to publicly ask a question of a publicly published document, the barriers to debate in a supposedly dialectic community are clearly very high. And if it is incredibly difficult for even the authors to make minor changes to published documents, we are treating knowledge not as a fluid flow of information, but as static edicts that reject evolution.

The individuating effects of award culture discredit the many in favour of an all-privileged few. Ultimately, “success” in science just keeps reinforcing itself: science is inherently capitalistic where the capital is institutional and social prestige, funding, and prolificacy in publication³⁰.

Science seeks to be progressive, and even the most revered gatekeepers of science have reflected on the deficiencies noted above⁸. However, scientists are people at the end of the day, and are often oblivious to their own biases and do not wish to change. This change is even more difficult when it seeks to subvert the existing power structures that are responsible for making the changes.

The only true mechanism for ensuring change is internal reflection and external accountability: I implore scientists to question themselves and their engagement in established institutions when they practice science, be transparent whenever they can be, and continually question their institutions. It is an uncomfortable reflection and inquiry that is necessary for us to progress. But it doesn’t need to be a hateful exercise: forgiveness, acknowledgement, and respect can lead us to vastly better results than punitive inquisition.

Many of the established mechanisms came out of necessity at a time when tools of inquiry were lacking, knowledge couldn’t be instantly shared, and the opinions of thousands of participants could not be accessed instantly. Today, we are privileged to be able to take advantage of these resources, and it is a shame if we do not, or if we limit the benefit of these advantages to a select few, who are often selected arbitrarily.

The issues that science faces are not purely science’s problems. Scientists have a responsibility to conduct and promote inquiry in the best possible manner to the benefit of society that trusts us with that responsibility. We live in an age when scientific results are continually questioned by the public, at a huge cost to communities around the world, and the world itself. A lot of it is our own making as we fail to share science among students, promote science that needs to be done, and filter and highlight impactful scientific results.

This is a working document that reflects an exploration that I have endeavoured upon and exposes significant inadequacies in my understanding of these topics that I whole-heartedly embrace. I am not a student of scientific change, and barely a practitioner of one. I do not present any new arguments, and in my presentation above, sacrifice nuance for conciseness. Extensive literature deals with the issues above, and I have cited a few which I have come across through my limited means of discovery. I implore you to explore, both through the literature below and by conversing with your peers, and educate me when I need to advance my understanding of these topics.

[1] Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

In his seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn challenges the notion that science is cumulative and progressive, and instead he described how science develops through successive periods of tradition-preserving normal science and tradition-shattering revolutions. Though his argument is an epistemological one, it is crucial to the argument above that science is not a teleological exercise with a static paradigm, but is constantly shaped by revolutions brought about by the world views of its participants. Thus, for science to be truly progressive and revolutionary, it must embrace and encourage diverse views that challenge the existing paradigm and bring about revolutionary ideas.

[2] Crombie, A. C. (1963). Scientific Change: Historical studies in the intellectual, social and technical conditions for scientific discovery and technical invention, from antiquity to the present

[3] Xie, Y., Fang, M., & Shauman, K. (2015). STEM education. Annual review of sociology, 41, 331–357.

[4] Cheryan, S., Ziegler, S. A., Montoya, A. K., & Jiang, L. (2017). Why are some STEM fields more gender balanced than others?. Psychological bulletin, 143(1), 1.

[5] Sewell, W. H., Haller, A. O., & Ohlendorf, G. W. (1970). The educational and early occupational status attainment process: Replication and revision. American sociological review, 1014–1027.

[6] Fischer, C. S., Hout, M., Jankowski, M. S., Lucas, S. R., Swidler, A., & Voss, K. (1996). Inequality by design: cracking the bell curve myth. Princeton University Press.

[7] Buchmann, C., DiPrete, T. A., & McDaniel, A. (2008). Gender inequalities in education. Annu. Rev. Sociol, 34, 319–337.

[8] National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). Graduate STEM education for the 21st century. National Academies Press.

[9] Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury publishing USA.

[10] Matthews, M. R. (Ed.). (1998). Constructivism in science education: A philosophical examination. Springer Science & Business Media.

[11] Osborne, R., & Freyberg, P. (1985). Learning in Science. The Implications of Children’s Science. Heinemann Educational Books, Inc., 70 Court Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801..

[12] Hmelo-Silver, C. E., Duncan, R. G., & Chinn, C. A. (2007). Scaffolding and achievement in problem-based and inquiry learning: a response to Kirschner, Sweller, and. Educational psychologist, 42(2), 99–107.

[13] Barnett, R. (2007). Will to learn: Being a student in an age of uncertainty. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).

[14] Hooks, B. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.

[15] Black, A. E., & Deci, E. L. (2000). The effects of instructors’ autonomy support and students’ autonomous motivation on learning organic chemistry: A self‐determination theory perspective. Science education, 84(6), 740–756.

[16] Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 18(1), 105.

[17] Jacob, B. A., & Lefgren, L. (2011). The impact of research grant funding on scientific productivity. Journal of public economics, 95(9–10), 1168–1177.

[18] Shibayama, S. (2019). Sustainable development of science and scientists: Academic training in life science labs. Research Policy, 48(3), 676–692.

[19] Fochler, M., Felt, U., & Müller, R. (2016). Unsustainable growth, hyper-competition, and worth in life science research: Narrowing evaluative repertoires in doctoral and postdoctoral scientists’ work and lives. Minerva, 54(2), 175–200.

[20] Stephan, P. E. (2012). How economics shapes science (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[21] Mayden, K. D. (2012). Peer review: publication’s gold standard. Journal of the advanced practitioner in oncology, 3(2), 117.

[22] Smith, R. (2006). Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals. Journal of the royal society of medicine, 99(4), 178–182.

[23] Ross-Hellauer, T. (2017). What is open peer review? A systematic review. F1000Research, 6.

[24] Ben-David, J., & Sullivan, T. A. (1975). Sociology of science. Annual Review of Sociology, 1(1), 203–222.

[25] Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410–8415.

[26] Brownell, S. E., & Tanner, K. D. (2012). Barriers to faculty pedagogical change: Lack of training, time, incentives, and… tensions with professional identity?. CBE — Life Sciences Education, 11(4), 339–346.

[27] Kravitz, R. L., Franks, P., Feldman, M. D., Gerrity, M., Byrne, C., & Tierney, W. M. (2010). Editorial peer reviewers’ recommendations at a general medical journal: are they reliable and do editors care?. PLoS One, 5(4), e10072.

[28] Fang, F. C., & Casadevall, A. (2011). Retracted science and the retraction index.

[29] Wold, A., & Wennerås, C. (1997). Nepotism and sexism in peer review. Nature, 387(6631), 341–343.

[30] Merton, R. K. (1968). The Matthew effect in science: The reward and communication systems of science are considered. Science, 159(3810), 56–63.

[31] Beall, J. (2012). Predatory publishers are corrupting open access. Nature, 489(7415), 179–179.

[32] Willinsky, J. (2006). The access principle: The case for open access to research and scholarship. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

[33] Araújo, E. B., Araújo, N. A., Moreira, A. A., Herrmann, H. J., & Andrade Jr, J. S. (2017). Gender differences in scientific collaborations: Women are more egalitarian than men. PloS one, 12(5), e0176791.

[34] Asplund, M., & Welle, C. G. (2018). Advancing science: How bias holds us back. Neuron, 99(4), 635–639.

[35] Freeman, R. B., & Huang, W. (2015). Collaborating with people like me: Ethnic coauthorship within the United States. Journal of Labor Economics, 33(S1), S289-S318.

[36] Meirmans, S., Butlin, R. K., Charmantier, A., Engelstädter, J., Groot, A. T., King, K. C., … & Neiman, M. (2019). Science policies: How should science funding be allocated? An evolutionary biologists’ perspective. Journal of evolutionary biology, 32(8), 754–768.

[37] Powell, K. (2016). Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories. Nature News, 538(7626), 446.

[38] Krimsky, S. (2013). Do financial conflicts of interest bias research? An inquiry into the “funding effect” hypothesis. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 38(4), 566–587.

[39] Ginther, D. K., Schaffer, W. T., Schnell, J., Masimore, B., Liu, F., Haak, L. L., & Kington, R. (2011). Race, ethnicity, and NIH research awards. Science, 333(6045), 1015–1019.

[40] Oliveira, D. F., Ma, Y., Woodruff, T. K., & Uzzi, B. (2019). Comparison of National Institutes of Health grant amounts to first-time male and female principal investigators. Jama, 321(9), 898–900.

[41] Murray, D. L., Morris, D., Lavoie, C., Leavitt, P. R., MacIsaac, H., Masson, M. E., & Villard, M. A. (2016). Bias in research grant evaluation has dire consequences for small universities. PloS one, 11(6), e0155876.

[42] Bonta, M., Gosford, R., Eussen, D., Ferguson, N., Loveless, E., & Witwer, M. (2017). Intentional fire-spreading by “Firehawk” raptors in Northern Australia. Journal of Ethnobiology, 37(4), 700–718.

[43] Kuhn, T. S. (1957). The Copernican revolution: Planetary astronomy in the development of Western thought (Vol. 16). Harvard University Press.

[44] Fleck, L. (2012). Genesis and development of a scientific fact. University of Chicago Press.

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