Scientific whitewashing

I helped launder the reputation of a scientific society. Are US scientists doing the same for our government?

You have probably heard about the drama around the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Human Rights Watch issued a statement accusing comics who participated of helping to “whitewash” the horrific human rights record of the Saudi Arabian government. Several well-known comedians (Marc Maron, David Cross) called out their colleagues, including Bill Burr, Pete Davidson, and Aziz Ansari. According to comedian Atsuko Okatsuka, comics had to agree not to “degrade, defame . . .or ridicule” Saudi Arabia, the royal family, or any religion. And, in fact, Bill Burr has since returned to his podcast to defend his decision and describe how the royal family “just wanted to laugh.”

As I often do when I am intrigued by a pop culture event, I looked on Reddit to see what other people are saying. The comments there followed an interesting trajectory. Most of the upvoted comments at the top of the page were highly critical of comics who’d agreed to perform at the festival, listed the many human rights abuses of the Saudi government, and implicated them in the 9/11 attacks. A little farther down were complaints that these guys (they are almost all guys) are already so rich that they don’t need to “sell out.” (As if all evidence doesn’t indicate that being rich causes people to sell out.) And then, at the bottom of the page, I read a comment that could be paraphrased as: “well, it’s not much different to take money from the US, who is funding the destruction of Palestine, pressuring media organizations to fire those who don’t share partisan viewpoints, and denying basic rights to people who share the appearance of illegal immigrants.”

To be clear, I do think that it is different. But that comment got me started thinking about the ways in which scientists and academics help with the whitewashing (here, I mean reputation laundering) of various institutions.

I’ve done reputation laundering

I suspect many women and people of color in academia are aware that their work—and simply their presence—is used to improve the appearance of their universities, departments, and scientific societies. But it took me a while to figure this one out for myself.

Back when I was a professor, I did a fair bit of work for my scientific society, one that has a stated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. I served as a journal editor for one of the society’s journals, a demanding job that is integral to the process of peer review. I also worked with them to co-create and co-host six seasons of an award-winning podcast aimed at making academic culture more welcoming for trainees in the plant sciences. And I made other little contributions to DEI efforts over the years.

In my small way, I helped burnish their reputation as a scientific society committed to a culture of respect and inclusion—a reputation they needed to cultivate after decades of exclusionary practices. I didn’t think of this as whitewashing until I discovered that they were, in fact, not committed at all—at least not when it came to me. The society would not protect me from a bully; rather they recruited him into leadership. When I appealed to the president of the society, armed with screenshots and emails, I was told, “At the end of the day, the central issue to think about is [our] reputation.” You see, the bully would make a big social media stink if he was called to account for what he’d been doing, and the “central issue” was to avoid getting on his bad side, the side I was on. It’s hard to describe how crushed I was by this (and how dumb I now feel to have been so crushed). I stepped away from my editing job, stopped paying my membership dues, but many of my contributions are still there, still serving a useful whitewashing purpose.

Are US scientists unwittingly whitewashing the US Government?

Despite what the Supreme Court might say, the US government is violating human rights and suppressing free speech. US science is being censored as NIH program officers and Republican members of congress scan grant proposals for banned words before they are considered for funding or renewal. And the administration just rolled out an official system of extortion, disgustingly called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”, that offers preferential research funding to institutions that pledge to adhere to the administration’s xenophobic, transphobic, and partisan viewpoints. So—there is plenty of dirt that needs whitewashing if the US is to keep up the appearance of a functioning scientific ecosystem.

Some federal science agency leaders, like former Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Demetre Daskalakis, have quit rather than provide a veneer of legitimacy to the current incarnation of the CDC. Others, I know for a fact, are staying in their positions in order to do what they can from the inside. But what about the regular, work-a-day academic scientist whose work is funded by the federal government through grants from the NIH, the NSF, or the DOE? By continuing to produce new knowledge and move science forward using government funds, are they helping whitewash what is going on in those government agencies?

Different standards for performers and scientists?

Many of us might judge a performer for selling out if they perform at a Trump inauguration. I know I think differently about Snoop Dog now. But is a scientist selling out if they do research paid for by the Trump administration? My thinking has gone around and around on this question.

On one hand, the production of new knowledge, treatments for disease and attempts to mitigate hunger, and a better understanding of the world all serve humanity—so scientists are doing good things with these funds. Also, one might argue that federal grant money comes from US taxpayers, not the Trump administration. And there are trainees, staff members, and entire economic systems set up around academic research; declining a grant means depriving other people of a living, not just yourself. While it was easy for me to give up association with my scientific society, as it didn’t really affect my core missions as a professor, for many academic scientists to turn down federal funding would be a fatal blow to their research programs.

On the other hand, scientists aren’t entirely different from artists. Artists also create important outcomes for society. They also support an ecosystem of apprentices and a surrounding economic apparatus. Yet there are small artistic groups out there refusing to take government money when it clashes with their stated values—despite the fact that these relatively small funds are essential for the work they do, and despite the fact that this money originated with taxpayers.

So, I don’t know what to think, other than that this is all very worth thinking about. The scarcity around funding and research resources keeps scientists in a defensive crouch of fear and constant striving, and prevents collective strategic action. Lines are blurry and it’s hard to know when they’ve been crossed. But we cannot just keep our heads down and hope this all goes away, because it’s not going to any time soon.

So many thoughts, so many questions. What do you think? What do you wonder? I’d be so interested to know.

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