Minding the Sciences — Death of a Science Academy

By Hamadryad

In July 2020, just two months after the killing of George Floyd, chairwoman of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 84-year-old civil-rights pioneer Eddie Bernice Johnson, asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)

[T]o take action on research and policy related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and the racial biases in the nation’s systems that disadvantage people from marginalized backgrounds in pursuit of science, engineering, and medical studies and careers. … Remarks from the National Academies leadership reflected a commitment to removing the barriers to participation in STEMM rooted in deep systemic and structural inequities [emphases added].

In response, under the heading CALLS FOR URGENT ACTION, National Academy of Sciences (NAS) president Marcia McNutt convened a “national summit” in July 2021, which

highlighted how racism operates at different levels in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) settings; reviewed policies and practices for confronting systemic racism; and explored ways to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in STEMM settings.

This “summit” comprised nine members, including Susan Fiske (Princeton University, psychology) and Gilda Barabino (Olin College of Engineering, biomedical and chemical engineering). The selection of experts was not random or even representative of the range of relevant disciplines. Most members are involved in DEI work; none, as far as I can see, is an expert in the study of individual and group behavioral differences.

The congresswoman’s request should have placed the Academies in a difficult position, because it contains assumptions about racial bias and disadvantage that are not settled science. A proper response would have been to convene a balanced group of researchers who could accurately describe the current state of knowledge on those issues. Or, President McNutt could have declined to comment, on the grounds that the science is too uncertain and the topics too political to be proper subjects for an NAS position paper. Of course, she did neither, because Ms. Johnson’s position is no different from her own, as her earlier comments complaining about too many white males in STEM and vowing “to change the face of the Academy” reveal.¹

The Mission of the National Academies is to “provide independent, trustworthy advice and facilitate solutions to complex challenges by mobilizing expertise, practice, and knowledge in science, engineering, and medicine,” and their Vision is “A nation and a world that rely on scientific evidence to make decisions that benefit humanity.” Not too specific, but, clearly, scientific evidence and knowledge in science are important. So, one might expect, as a first step, that the scientists on this committee would look at some of the assumptions in Congresswoman Johnson’s request rather than simply echoing them, as Dr. McNutt’s remarks suggest.

A committee asked to look at water pollution, say, would not take for granted an initial suggestion that mercury is the cause. Before recommending action, it would analyze water samples and look into the possibly toxic effects of all the chemicals they contain. In the same way, we might expect this committee to examine Johnson’s assumptions about bias and systemic racism. Is there racial discrimination? In what sense is it “systemic,” and so on? Are there other causes for racial disparities in STEMM? It should find the causes before recommending remedies. But, since Johnson’s assumptions are also McNutt’s, it did not.

Of course, social science is less settled than chemistry. It is much harder to decide on the causes of, say, the underrepresentation of certain racial groups in STEMM than on the causes of an ailment traceable to the toxic effects of a known chemical. There are many contributors to academic performance, and their effects are likely to be long delayed. Experiment is usually impossible. No matter: the very difficulty of the task just underlines the importance of advancing understanding before recommending action.

But this is not at all how the National Academies’ workshop reacted. “Racial bias” was illustrated by a single study showing that “bias in hiring is so strong that Black men’s resumes were only viewed as competitive as their White counterparts if the White applicant’s history included a criminal history,” which does indeed look like bias. On the other hand, the response of the employer was just a callback, not an actual hiring decision, and there is no evidence that the employer was wrong in his estimate of potential employee quality. Above all, this is not evidence of discrimination in STEMM, which is the topic of the report. The committee found no evidence of racial bias in STEMM, other than a statistical underrepresentation of some groups that were promptly labeled disadvantaged. The committee wholeheartedly accepted Congresswoman Johnson’s premise that people from “marginalized backgrounds” are “disadvantaged,” rather than different from the majority in some other way. In short, it abdicated its duty to establish the scientific truth of the assumptions presented to it before recommending action.

But don’t despair. The little-known discipline of “diversity science” is available:

Diversity science recognizes both the individual-level psychological tendencies that occur in individuals and the broader sociocultural frameworks that explain the complex implications for behavior.

The language is jarring, but the ideas are basic. Yes, everyone recognizes that individual interests and abilities—“individual-level psychological tendencies”—as well as the societal environment—“broader sociocultural frameworks”—exist and can potentially “explain … behavior.” Unfortunately, this report focuses exclusively on the environment, on discrimination. Individual differences in aptitude, interests, education, etc. get no attention whatever. It is as if a committee assigned to study water pollution obsessed over mercury, ignoring all other possibilities.

In the end, the 2021 recommendation was hortatory: “The Summit has been a call to ensure that people from all backgrounds have equitable support and resources to pursue their educational and professional goals.” Who can object to that (although more detail on just what “equitable” means would be helpful)?

The 2023 Report

The 2021 report is preliminary and relatively short, just twelve pages. But now, two years later, NASEM has issued a much longer and even less balanced report, the 450-page Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations: Beyond Broadening Participation. The four editors of the report were Drs. Fiske and Barabino, mentioned earlier, and two NASEM staff members. Two committees were involved: the Committee on Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in STEM Organizations (18 members) and the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences (12 members). Eleven reviewers were consulted: so, a total of almost fifty people. I’m not sure who the actual writers were.

The weight of credential-prestige (Referenzengewicht?—there must be a German word for it!) behind this second report is considerable; diversity, in the sense of a range of expertise and values, much less so. As with its predecessor, most of the professionals involved seem to have a major interest in racial-equity issues and, correspondingly, an allegiance to what one might call the “standard DEI model.” The committee “elected to focus on challenges facing Black Americans in STEMM.”

Again, there seem to be no IQ experts, no one interested in behavioral differences between groups. Indeed, the only reference I could find to the intelligence issue pertains to slavery-era claims of racial differences in “intelligence, industriousness, ingenuity, sexuality, and criminal behavior,” which were justified by “pseudoscientific intelligence testing, or measuring brain sizes—measurements that were later shown to be fraudulent (e.g., Gould, 1978).” This refers primarily to the work of physician Samuel Morton. The committee—or, at least, one of its eleven reviewers—should have known that Stephen Jay Gould’s claim is the false one. Morton’s brain-size measurements have been fully substantiated (New York Times, 2011). Gould’s attack on IQ measurement in the revised edition of his book The Mismeasure of Man has also been thoroughly debunked. The one factual claim in the report in support of the standard “disparities are the result of systemic racism” model is not true, and alternative accounts are totally omitted.

The NASEM committee doesn’t just promote Gould’s mendacious criticism—it seems not to understand the issue. In what sense are intelligence tests ‘pseudoscientific,’ for example? They do not pretend to measure some kind of Platonic essence of intellectual capacity. They are just tests that make useful predictions: a high IQ, for example, predicts better academic performance than a low one, just as high blood pressure predicts a higher risk of stroke. There’s nothing ‘pseudoscientific’ about predictions like these, which are as true for blacks as they are for whites.

In fact, any possibility that behavioral differences might play a role in below-average STEMM outcomes for “disadvantaged people” is simply ignored in the report. There are hundreds of references (including one to a paper co-authored by notorious fraudster D. A. Stapel), but nary a one on individual and group differences in attitudes, interests, and abilities. (The report does, however, add to the expanding DEI vocabulary. In addition to “minoritized,” there is “latine,” an alternative to the now-unacceptable “latinx.” ‘Controversially,’ the report capitalizes “White,” even though it “risks legitimizing White supremacy.” Linguistic purity seems to be more important to the writers than scientific scrupulousness.)

Neither space nor attention span permits a line-by-line analysis of this weighty tome. A summary will have to suffice.

Let’s start with definitions. Systemic racism is a very popular term in this literature. The report defines it thusly:

Systemic and structural racism are forms of racism that are pervasively and deeply embedded in and throughout systems, laws, written or unwritten policies, entrenched practices, and established beliefs and attitudes that produce, condone, and perpetuate widespread unfair treatment of minoritized people (Bonilla-Silva, 1997).

This is not a usable definition, because the term racism is not itself defined, nor do we know what “pervasively and deeply embedded …” means. (Eduardo Bonilla-Silva is best known for his book Racism without Racists, in which he claims that colorblindness is itself racist, a paradoxical, not to mention nonsensical, claim that has nevertheless caught on.)

The next paragraph claims that “Structural racism describes ‘cultural values in a society that are so ingrained in daily life that they are seen simply as the way things are,’” which is also not very helpful. The systemic racism literature never reveals how this supposedly omnipresent force can be measured. The best I can find is the comment a few sentences later that “Institutional racism denotes policies and practices within and across institutions that, intentionally or not, produce outcomes that chronically favor White people,” which sounds usable but raises a few questions: What if “Black people” are favored? Is institutional racism defined solely by disparities? Is that what is meant by “chronically favor”? Is any racial disparity proof of racism? This is, in fact, assumed throughout the report. Disparities mean racism, and their reduction, by almost any means, therefore counts as “antiracism” even if this requires discrimination against a majority.

The sad history of anti-black racism in the U.S. is treated at length. Its causal relevance to present-day problems is questionable, but its emotional effect is undeniable. Anti-Asian racism is mentioned early on, but the emphasis is on anti-black racism, perhaps because Asian Americans have, in fact, surpassed whites by most socioeconomic metrics in recent decades. The report does not speculate on the relative success of Asians compared to other ‘minoritized’ people. The assumption is that the uniquely tragic history of anti-black racism bears all the blame for any disparities.

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