Following the recent death of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson, a professor of nursing wrote for Scientific American of “the complicated legacies of scientists whose works are built on racist ideas.”
Within academia, there has been a tireless, insidious movement to derail particular lines of research by terrorizing scientists with unfounded accusations of racism and bigotry. Every week, I am alerted by my readers to yet another case of an academic being tarred, feathered, and dragged as part of a concerted effort to erase biological explanations in favor of blank slateism (the belief that human nature is socially constructed and learned).
Regardless of whether the topic is race, sex, gender, or something else contentious, critics will claim that biology is dangerous, conflating truth with bad ideas extrapolated from it. They don’t, however, manage to disprove the findings they take issue with, in many cases misrepresenting and straw-manning an individual’s work because they have no understanding of the scientific method and lack any interest in it.
Once upon a time, if you disagreed with an academic colleague about their findings, you would write a rebuttal for publication in a scientific journal. Maybe you’d conduct your own study in hopes of disproving theirs. The colleague with whom you disagreed would welcome your dissent.
Now, the most effective way to counter ideas you don’t like is to accuse the person holding them of being a racist. The effects are twofold: shutting most people up and successfully derailing any chance they might pursue similar research in the future.
While it is reasonable to be concerned about how science is being undertaken and used, this is not the way to go about advocating for research ethics. This intimidation sets the norm throughout society that scientists should fear their own results and that racial justice activism should eclipse scientific discovery.
In the meantime, students and up-and-coming scientists are learning that it doesn’t matter whether you’re doing your job properly; anything related to biology or evolution is hateful, and if someone compares you to Nazis, that will be given full consideration even if they have no idea about your work and are incapable of refuting it.
Overplaying the “racism” card makes the word meaningless, and racial minorities will, unfortunately, be the ones to pay the price. But ending discrimination is not part of the activist agenda, which is solely invested in purging universities of scientists, dissenters, and white men.
Dr. Debra Soh is a sex neuroscientist, the host of The Dr. Debra Soh Podcast, and the author of The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths About Sex and Identity in Our Society.
