Here is the uplifting story of a 26-page article titled “In Defense of Merit in Science.” Written in English and signed by 29 researchers of various origins and nationalities – including two Nobel Prize winners in chemistry -, this paper is based on two main axes. From a point of view of the theory of knowledge, these scientists enjoin us to continue to consider science as the slow construction of an objectifiable truth through observation, experimentation and analysis. iteration. “We must judge science on its own merit”, they sum up, even if the scientific truths are of course likely to be amended over the discoveries and breakthroughs of research. On the other hand, they can never be corrected by an ideology, no matter how well intentioned.
This is why our 29 researchers are sorry to see the rise of a new school that calls into question this notion of objectifiable truth by presenting it as the false nose of racism, patriarchy and heteronormativity. Between a thousand examples, they warn against the recommendation to teach on the same level the merits of traditional so-called indigenous alternative medicine and those of modern medicine. The goal – “decolonizing science” – sounds progressive. But, from a medical point of view, this recommendation is a regression: “Effective treatments from traditional medicine are rare, even non-existent”, recalls the article. Before pointing out that “health agencies report numerous therapeutic accidents involving herbal products not validated according to ‘colonial’ standards”. Especially in the treatment of cancer.
Another axis of defense of merit in science: recruitment. For the new movement – which has the wind in its sails in the universities, and the ear of the administrations providing funding –, scientific truths are malleable and subjective. So the conclusions that a gay scientist or a black scientist would reach, for example, would not be the same as those that a heterosexual researcher or an Asian researcher would reach. Hence the need to recruit according to criteria of identity and not only according to selection methods based on academic results. Here again, the authors of the article warn against these new recommendations: according to them, the insufficient diversity in research must be fought, but upstream, as a product of inequalities and discrimination, and not in the name of truth. scientist. For in the hard sciences, they say, truth cannot depend on the identity of the researcher.
When scientific truth becomes a “controversial idea”
What is most edifying in this story does not lie in the content of the article, which points to and documents a trend that we already know, and which we have repeatedly spoken about and debated in these columns. No, the most incredible thing is that this article – signed by two Nobel Prize winners, let’s remember – was refused by all the major journals to which it was submitted. The editor of one of them motivating his veto by saying that the “concept of merit is downright hurtful”. Another arguing that merit was “legitimately attacked, because hollow”. In desperation, the authors had to fall back on a review – with a reading committee, all the same – of which they had never heard of until then, and whose name says it all about this fable of modern times: the Journal of Controversial Ideas.
The double moral of this story is therefore that the notion of objectifiable scientific truth is now a “controversial idea”, and that merit has very, very bad press. It must be said that his criticism is made all the easier as meritocracy is in crisis. As we made, politically, culturally, access to diplomas the alpha and the omega of a successful life – which was a mistake – we let meritocracy deteriorate in a scandalous way. . So that today some wrap themselves behind an illusory merit to justify their inherited advantages.
“The liberal ruling elite tells itself that it presides over a healthy meritocracy and that it has earned its privileges. The reality is more complex, noted the weekly The Economist in the manifesto he published for his 175th birthday. Liberal leaders have often sheltered themselves from the gusts of creative destruction.” Against this “taking hostage of merit”, which nevertheless founds liberal societies, it is absolutely necessary to fight. However, the very notion of merit, its philosophical, political and even scientific motivation remain indispensable.It is the incredible contribution of the Enlightenment to have substituted merit for privileges, defeating centuries of caste empire and bigoted hierarchy. No matter how hard I look, I don’t see any alternatives, only backward steps masked under the guise of progress.