Positionality statements in science: the NSF doesn’t want them, but journals do

We’ve talked before about “positionality statements” (see here and here; also Sally Satel’s article here). These are statements, usually put at the end of an academic paper, in which the authors give all kinds of information about their upbringing, ethnicity, race, sexual identity, sexual inclination, upbringing, and so on. It’s the kind of information that the Woke use when making a statement, putting it in the blank space here:  “As a _____________, I feel that. . . . ”

Here’s a typical statement, one that I’ve posted before:

I (first author) was raised as a Muslim immigrant-origin girl in a small Iowa town and constantly aware that my family was “different.” Having been an educator in PK-12 contexts, my goal in studying developmental psychology was to make the process easier for other youth who, like myself, were intersectionally minoritized and privileged because of religious, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and/or other identities or experiences. I was unprepared for the microaggressions embedded in developmental scholarship rooted in non-inclusive modes of knowledge production that resisted the nuances of the diverse individuals and groups I sought to better understand. . . . I seek to place myself in relationships and contexts to learn and engage in a co-conspiring, co-liberatory inquiry stance.

These are cringe-worthy of course, but their proponents say they’re useful.  I say they’re not, as did Sally Satel. In this matter Dorian Abbot, my heterodox colleague at the University of Chicago, also agrees. You can see his short HeterodoxSTEM article (it’s worth subscribing if you’re in STEM) by clicking the headline below.

The reason usually asserted for people making statements like this is that, by giving the authors’ backgrounds and beliefs, it enables the reader to better judge the paper scientifically, possibly being aware of biases that might affect a paper’s results or conclusions. But the authors should have been aware of this themselves and expunged any bias in their data collection or analysis, or at least gotten another pair of eyes to look over the paper before submitting it. And, of course, looking at the science in a paper, and seeing if it’s solid, is the job of the reviewers who decide whether it’s meritorious enough to be worth publishing. If authors can’t vet their own papers for accuracy before they submit them, they shouldn’t be doing science. As Sally Satel said:

Rather than confess the blind spots and biases they think they have, scientists should make their data transparent; pre-register research hypotheses; engage in rigorous, blind peer review; and publish detailed letters to the editor. It is the research that should come under scrutiny, not the researcher.

It seems likely to me that these statements have other purposes beyond vetting a paper. They are often used to flaunt virtue or even confess the author’s whiteness or other failings; in other words, they consitute = contrition, braggadocio, or both. The statements’ purpose is as much (or more) ideological than it is scientific. It also verges on solipsism.

As Dorian notes, the NSF prohibits such statements in proposals for getting grants:

the NSF has banned any personal information on official biosketches, for good reason (bolding is mine):

Individuals are reminded not to submit any personal information in the biographical sketch. This includes items such as: home address; home telephone, fax, or cell phone numbers; home e-mail address; driver’s license number; marital status; personal hobbies; and the like. Such personal information is not appropriate for the biographical sketch and is not relevant to the merits of the proposal.

So the NSF, for good reasons (irrelevance to the merit of a paper), prohibits these statements, but authors merrily include them when allowed, and one journal (according to Satel, it’s the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering) even requires them!

Dorian gives an over-the-top example of such a statement that he found here. It’s in the Journal of Paleobiology, part of a three-authored article on the underrepresentation of women in that field:

Nan Crystal Arens (she/her) is a White, cisgender, heteroromantic woman and professor in the Department of Geoscience at Hobart & William Smith Colleges (HWS). She was a first-generation college student with a learning disability that significantly slows her parsing and processing written language. HWS is a predominantly White, private undergraduate institution where faculty are encouraged to engage actively in scholarship, although both time and resources for this component of faculty work are extremely limited. HWS faculty in the natural sciences boast a strong tradition of including undergraduate students in their research, as reflected here. Arens’s advocacy for greater inclusion of historically marginalized people in STEMM arises both from her experience as a woman in geology and paleontology and as the mother of two cisgender women who are just beginning to confront the inequities of the world.

“Levi Holguin (he/they) is a person assigned female at birth, neurodivergent, queer, first-generation college student, and part of an immigrant family. They come from a low-income background and are a devotee of folk Catholicism. Many of his identity markers challenge normative standards in the several communities of which he is a part. This draws them into conversations regarding gender and intersectionality. He was motivated in this work by the desire to make change that will open opportunities for marginalized people.

“Natalie Sandoval (she/her) is an undergraduate Latina attending a predominantly White, private institution as a first-generation student. She is cisgender and queer, does not live with a disability, and from a low-income immigrant family. Growing up in an immigrant Latino family, she is no stranger to forced gender roles and machismo, which draws her to gender studies and equity issues. She has done previous research on gender representation in STEMM careers and feelings of belonging on campus. Her previous research also includes family planning and contraceptive use. She is a community advocate through the National Diversity Coalition and seeks opportunities to improve gender equity, accessibility, and human rights through community advocacy and policy change.”

Heteroromantic? Queer? Not disabiled?  What are the sweating author trying to convey with that information? I can’t see anything in these statements that would make me evaluate the paper differently from how I’d do it if I lacked this information. (Do note the virtue-flaunting!).

I don’t have much to add to what I’ve said before—save that this is just one more attempt of the Ideological Camel to insinuate its carcass into the Tent of Science.  In effect, it devalues what science is presented by implying that it might be biased (and offers no help in fixing any such bias!).  Dorian has a few words at the end that echo my own sentiments:

Positionality statements are a flagrant violation of one of the key Mertonian Norms of science, universalism, which states that “scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/personal attributes of its participants.” They are not just political grandstanding, which is bad enough, but actually act to undermine the ideal of the disinterested collection of evidence and development of explanatory theories by the scientific method, and therefore decrease confidence in scientific results. In science, it doesn’t matter if your father was a prince or pauper, what you look like, where you came from, or what naughty stuff you do with whom. Science is science, data are data, and bullshit is bullshit. In order to preserve the integrity of the scientific process, journals should ban positionality statements, and we, as reviewers, should automatically reject any paper that includes them.

Amen!