Progressives have destroyed the human sciences

Science still flourishes in the West, but the human sciences have been ruined by progressivism.

Written by Bo Winegard.

Was it some parody of progressivism run amok in academia? Unfortunately not. A few weeks ago, Nature Reviews Psychology published an editorial urging authors to “diversify” their scholarly citations by exploring “relevant studies from a diverse group of researchers” and by including “a citation diversity statement”.

In effect, the journal was advocating an intersectional socialism of science, in which scholarly status is determined not by merit but by one’s place on the hierarchy of victimhood. From each according to his privilege; to each according to his intersectionality. And since academia is overwhelmingly leftist, it subscribes to an ideologically distorted definition of diversity that is overtly anti-white.

For confirmation, consider this sentence from the journal’s model citation diversity statement:

Every attempt has been made to reference relevant research in a manner that is equitable in terms of racial, ethnic, gender and geographical representation.

Translated from euphemism:

Every attempt has been made to include citations from scholars who are not white, not male, not heterosexual, and not European.

So a journal — and not just a trifling one, but a publication bearing one of the most venerated names in science — is now urging researchers to scour the literature in search of papers written by non-white, non-male, and non-Western authors, and to cite them instead of white, male, Western ones. It’s hard to imagine a practice more antithetical to science, short of recommending that scholars falsify data or suppress inconvenient results.

How did we get here. How did such a prestigious scientific institution fall so far?

It began in the humanities: the obsession with identity and victimhood. Feminism, deconstructionism, post-colonial studies, and the rest of the critical-theory menagerie. The rise of such balderdash was undoubtedly obnoxious to serious scholars of literature. But for most others, it was ignorable. After all, who cared if some obscure literary critic deconstructed the white, phallocentric logic of Hamlet?

Then it spread like some experimental contagion in a horror film. Across the campus and into the world.

What began as an eccentric style of literary and cultural analysis soon migrated into anthropology, then social psychology, and eventually into nearly every corner of the human sciences. Values were subverted and eventually overturned. An idiosyncratic notion of social justice replaced truth as the ultimate end of scholarship.

Outside the academy, people fought back. After the riots of 2020 and the capture of the Biden agenda by identitarian progressives, a political reaction was inevitable. And it culminated in the re-election of Trump, a defiant iconoclast whose greatest electoral virtue is that he seems to despise everything that reeks of political correctness. But inside the academy, cultural progressivism still flourishes, largely untouched by electoral backlash.

Its effects have been catastrophic. The human sciences, once devoted to understanding man, have been repurposed to indict him, at least if he is white, male or Western. He is depicted as racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic: a thief, a plunderer, a killer.

In social psychology, entire research programs now revolve around moral accusation rather than empirical explanation. Studies of implicit bias, symbolic racism, and benevolent sexism are treated as revelations, not hypotheses. In sociology, structural oppression has become the universal explanation for all inequality, no matter how inconsistent the evidence or plausible the alternatives. And in anthropology, the comparative study of cultures has yielded to moral relativism and political advocacy.

Meanwhile, entire topics are taboo, and important truths are not merely ignored but actively suppressed. Sex differences and race differences, both crucial to understanding human nature, lie coiled in the room like a snake: impossible to ignore, yet dangerous to touch. The only acceptable explanation for any group disparity, whether between men and women or between blacks and whites, is systemic injustice. All other hypotheses are verboten.

After the paroxysms of 2020, progressives inside and outside the academy felt that history was on their side. The moment, they believed, had come at last. Their zeal for revolution was impressive: apologies were issued, commitments proclaimed, penance demanded. Scholars who objected were silenced or fired. Most fell into line, for academics are a notoriously cowardly lot.

The American Psychological Association led the way. In October 2021 it released a resolution apologizing to “people of color” for the APA’s alleged role in “promoting, perpetuating, and failing to challenge racism, racial discrimination, and human hierarchy in the U.S.”

The content of this abject self-flagellation reads less like a scientific document than a religious confession. The APA solemnly declared psychology to be complicit in “upholding white supremacy” and vowed to “prioritize efforts in knowledge production and scholarship … that create mechanisms to count and acknowledge all racial and ethnic groups,” and to “shed racist and colonial roots” in order to “become an actively antiracist discipline.”

These progressive catechisms have nothing to do with science. It is as if a coterie of conservative Catholics produced a “scientific” statement apologizing for “upholding secular beliefs” and promising to make psychology a “God-fearing discipline” devoted to the traditional virtues of Christianity.

What is more, the apology was paired with another document seeking to “dismantle systemic racism.” It records the colossal amount of time and energy the APA devoted to this new moral crusade (more than 500 hours of meetings) and outlines a path forward worthy of a ministry, not a scientific body. The plan calls for “equitable representation of scholars of color in scientific and community leadership positions, including but not limited to peer-review panels and editorial boards.” It also calls for the promotion of “innovative, culturally informed methodologies,” which includes “indigenous healing” and “Eastern medicine”.

In short, psychology, a field that once aimed at methodological rigor, now promised to privilege ideology and folk medicine in the name of justice, its dedication to science sacrificed on the altar of ideology.

During this same period of progressive fanaticism, Nature Human Behavior released an even more disconcerting editorial declaring that “Science must respect the dignity and rights of all humans.” Although the title is largely unobjectionable, the content is anything but. In effect, the journal announced that it would reject or retract articles that offend progressive sensibilities.

Of course, this policy was cloaked in a thin veneer of scientific and ethical sophistication, but the message was unmistakable: certain conclusions, however plausible, would no longer be publishable.

The editorial notes:

People can be harmed indirectly. For example, research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist, or homophobic. It may provide justification for undermining the human rights of specific groups, simply because of their social characteristics.

It continues:

Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication.

The intention is clear, though it requires a little translation. Research, the editors warn, can “harm” protected groups by stigmatizing them. Suppose, for instance, that a study were to find measurable differences in average IQ between racial groups. Although knowledge is a public good, it may not justify the “harm” of stigmatization. Therefore, Nature will reject such research no matter its rigor, data, or truth value if it offends progressive moral sentiments.

Of course, this was already standard practice in academic publishing, as anyone who studies human variation and intelligence knows. But at least most journals once maintained the pretense of fidelity to the scientific ideal. Here, however, was a hallowed name in scholarship, Nature, publicly announcing its perfidy. Science be damned if the truth upsets the egalitarians.

And here lies the ultimate cause of this lamentable decline of the human sciences: reality itself is not concordant with the progressive worldview. Progressives are egalitarians; they believe that most social disparities arise from systemic injustice. To them, disproportionate representation is virtual proof of bias.

In truth, however, variation among individuals and groups is the predominant cause of social disparity. Just as some people are more intelligent, more attractive, more ambitious, or more charismatic than others, so too are some groups. The world is unequal because human beings are unequal, not in dignity or worth, but in temperament, talent, and capacity.

Since the human sciences will inevitably reveal these differences if allowed the freedom to pursue truth, progressives face a stark choice: either permit science to undermine their metaphysical commitments, or suppress it. So far, they have chosen suppression. Once the self-appointed guardians of scientific reason against conservative dogma, progressives have now turned against science itself because it threatens their sacred conviction that all human groups are equal.

Of course, they still profess to “trust the science,” but the performance grows less convincing by the year. With every statement that questions scientific freedom, apologizes for imagined racism, or extols “citation justice,” the mask fractures further, revealing a censorious snarl beneath.

Progressives have ruined not only the humanities but the human sciences as well. The mockable prose once confined to the literary theorists obsessed with identity and social justice now saturates the official statements of professional psychological associations. Curious scientists are forced to turn to bloggers and dissident outlets for the most obvious truths about sex and race. One can only hope that things will improve and that a mature science might yet rise from these ruins.

In the meantime, anyone who wishes to understand human nature would do better to set aside the modern psychology textbook or journal article and pick up Nietzsche or Dostoevsky.

Bo Winegard is an Editor of Aporia.

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