Abstract
I compare two different arguments for the importance of bringing new voices into science: arguments for increasing the representation of women, and arguments for the inclusion of the public, or for “citizen science”. I suggest that in each case, diversifying science can improve the quality of scientific results in three distinct ways: epistemically, ethically, and politically. In the first two respects, the mechanisms are essentially the same. In the third respect, the mechanisms are importantly different. Though this might appear to suggest a broad similarity between the cases, I show that the analysis reveals an important respect in which efforts to include the public are more complex. With citizen science programs, unlike with efforts to bring more women into science, the three types of improvement are often in conflict with one another: improvements along one dimension may come at a cost on another dimension, suggesting difficult trade-offs may need to be made.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Many of the arguments I discuss focus specifically on the importance of bringing feminist or non-androcentric perspectives into science. This is, of course, not the same thing as bringing women into science: not all women see things in a feminist way, and non-women can offer feminist perspectives. I won’t worry about this distinction, however, since securing a critical mass of women in a scientific field is, realistically, a necessary step towards ensuring that feminist perspectives are influential in that field. Okruhlik, for example, says: “It is not a logical necessity but also no accident that the advent of certain [non-androcentric] scientific hypotheses coincided with…increased representation of women in the academy and scientific communities” (1994, p. 41; cf. Wylie, 2012, p.65; Fehr, 2011). Though it would be natural for me to appeal to standpoint theory, I won’t do so. That’s because there are different versions of standpoint theory, and (more importantly) standpoint theory is frequently misinterpreted by its critics in serious ways (Wylie, 2012; Crasnow, 2008; Intemann, 2010). All my argument requires is the modest claim that bringing more women into science will tend to make science less sexist and/or androcentric. This could be because women are uniquely able to spot androcentric practices, because women simply notice such practices more often than men, because a critical mass of women is needed for them to have the power to push back against such practices, or even because men more often notice their own androcentrism when in the presence of women. Though I myself think some version of standpoint theory is correct, any of these possibilities would be sufficient for my analysis.
There are a variety of phrases used to describe the many types of scientific research involving both professional scientists and the public, including community-based participatory research, participant-led research, and participatory action research. I mean to include all of them under the broad heading of “citizen science”. See Eitzel et al., (2017) for a discussion of the terminology used to describe such projects, and Strasser et al., (2019) for a discussion of its history.
See e.g. Cavalier & Kennedy (2016).
This formulation may seem to suggest a realist approach to science, but the underlying point is compatible with most antirealist approaches, as well. As should be clear from the examples I discuss below, greater inclusion has led to changes that nearly any non-skeptical account of science would regard as epistemic improvements (e.g. correctly identifying skeletal remains as female which had been erroneously classified as male, or producing a map of air quality with a hundred times as many reliable data points).
Could a gain in empirical adequacy or accuracy nevertheless not count as an overall epistemic improvement, if it comes at the cost of some other epistemic value (e.g. generalizability)? Possibly—though the high importance most accounts give to accuracy means that the cost to those other values would likely have to be very large. In any case, none of the examples I discuss below are plausibly such cases. They involve clear improvements in accuracy with no obvious costs along other epistemic dimensions.
See, e.g. Elliott (2017), Elliott & Richards (2017). As noted above, ethical and political values may also be involved in choosing among epistemic values (Longino, 1995). To the extent this is true, the relationship between epistemic assessment, ethical assessment, and political assessment may be a complex one. Nevertheless, we saw above that there are clear cases in which we can document epistemic improvement without inquiring into ethical or political matters. And the examples below will show clear cases in which we can document ethical and political improvements without inquiring into epistemic matters. In this paper, I will focus on cases where the three dimensions are assessable independently of each other.
The correct formulation here will depend on the particular meta-ethical view one endorses. But the basic idea that some ethical judgments or values are superior to others should be acceptable to any non-skeptical account. Even non-cognitivists, for example, can accept that some ethical principles are true or that there are certain things that everyone ought to value (though, of course, they may mean something different by ‘true’ than a meta-ethical cognitivist). See e.g. Blackburn (1998).
In referencing Anderson’s discussion, I don’t mean to be endorsing the entirety of her argument, e.g. her view of the relationship between values and evidence. Though I don’t think anything she says is necessarily in conflict with the view I’ve presented here, it also isn’t critical to my use of her case study.
Of course, some might question whether all of Stewart’s assumptions constituted ethical improvements. According to some religious traditions, for example, the traditional family unit does have intrinsic value. But for those not convinced by any particular example here, the feminist philosophy of science literature contains plenty of additional examples of uncontroversial ethical improvements. See, e.g., Kourany (2010).
As Mahr & Dickel (2019) explain, in most citizen science projects the public’s involvement is restricted to limited, pre-defined, well-structured tasks. To realize the ethical benefits I discuss here (and also the political benefits discussed in the next section), the public must be given more autonomy and greater input into the design and structure of research.
Even theorists who believe that moral principles are knowable a priori typically can (and should) recognize that experience is critical to gaining moral knowledge. McGrath (2011).
To be clear, I mean here to be talking about actual legitimacy, as opposed to perceived legitimacy. These are not the same thing. A majority might think that a government that regularly consults (only) them is legitimate, and they might regard as illegitimate a decision-making process that made a special effort to give voice to the viewpoints of unjustly marginalized minority groups. But the majority’s perceptions here would be wrong: the latter process would actually be more legitimate. Proponents of diversifying science have, I think, spent more time discussing perceived legitimacy. (See e.g. Sarewitz 2010.) I think it is important to begin with a discussion of actual legitimacy, for reasons similar to those I offer elsewhere for focusing on what makes science trustworthy, before focusing on what makes science trusted (Schroeder, 2021).
There may appear to be a problem with achieving political legitimacy in this way. In order to meaningfully weigh in on technical issues, citizens need to be well-informed. But, on most issues, well-informed citizens are not representative of the public as a whole. There is thus a tension between representativeness and being sufficiently informed. The examples cited here show two different ways of addressing this tension. In Valdez, Alaska, participants were selected from stakeholder groups who were already well-informed about the issues. They were therefore not likely to be demographically representative of the public. But they arguably could still claim to represent the public. One of the main stakeholder groups participating, for example, was the Regional Citizens Advisory Council, an organization whose explicit mission was to represent the interests of citizens impacted by oil transport in the region. As several political theorists have noted, cases of such “informal” political representation by unelected bodies are common, and can play an important and necessary role in democratic deliberation (Salkin, 2021).
Consensus conferences and citizen juries provide a different type of solution. Since they start with a randomly-selected sample of the public, they at least initially meet the representativeness condition. They then seek to meet the information requirement by educating the recruited group on the relevant issues. The output of a consensus conference, then, may not be representative of the public’s actual views, but it does represent what the public would think, if it were well informed. According to deliberative democratic theorists, this latter sort of representativeness is in many contexts a legitimate foundation for political decision-making.
I have been unable to find reliable data about scientists’ political affiliation by gender. But Atkeson & Taylor (2019) looked at one field, political science, and found that although political scientists as a whole leaned strongly liberal (endorsing the Democratic party), women in political science leaned even more strongly in that direction than men.
We wouldn’t want to say that all values that are normatively mistaken or suboptimal are politically illegitimate. If we are to leave any meaningful room for procedures to operate, we have to respect their decisions in at least some cases where those decisions are suboptimal. You can’t, for example, declare a law politically illegitimate simply because it has flaws. It is only specific types of failures that render a decision politically illegitimate.
I offer a fuller argument for this and related claims in Schroeder (forthcoming-b).
Indeed, the argument generalizes along all three dimensions we’ve discussed: we should expect that the greater inclusion of scientists of color and disabled scientists will yield epistemic and ethical benefits for the same reason the greater inclusion of women does. This, of course, fits with the analyses offered by many feminist philosophers, who see their insights as not specifically tied to sex and gender, but to power structures and social hierarchies more generally (Crasnow & Intemann, 2020).
I thank Heather Douglas for pushing me to think more carefully about this possibility.
See e.g. Rawls (2005).
Many feminist scholars have pushed back against a sharp distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic (ethical/political) goals of science. See e.g. Anderson (1995) or Longino (1994). This result vindicates such an approach in the cases feminist philosophers of science have discussed. If the problems have the same source, it makes sense that it might not be possible to clearly distinguish them.
Many authors discuss conflicts between epistemic, ethical, and/or political aspects of inclusion. But nearly all of those discussions use ‘ethical’ and ‘political’ differently than I do here, to refer to the motives for inclusion the public, rather than the value judgments embedded in scientific results. When it comes to scientific results themselves, their focus tends to be exclusively epistemic. (See Wylie 2015 for an example of this.) A few authors do speak of a conflict between epistemic and political goals, in a sense similar to mine. (See e.g. Solomon 2009 – though she interprets “democratized science” in a very different way than most proponents of citizen science — and Eigi 2017.) But, to my knowledge, no one has discussed a 3-way conflict between epistemic, ethical, and political assessment of scientific results.
To say that there may be trade-offs is of course not to say that there always will be. Scientists’ partnerships with indigenous groups, for example, may yield improvements along all three dimensions. Note, though, that this is because the case parallels the case for the inclusion of women: science has a documented history of making unethical assumptions concerning indigenous people, failing to treat them as equals. For philosophers writing about the benefits of such collaborations, see e.g. Wylie (2015) and Whyte et al., (2016).
References
Anderson, E. (1995). Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology. Philosophical Topics, 23(2), 27–58
Anderson, E. (2004). Uses of Value Judgments in Science: A General Argument, with Lessons from a Case Study of Feminist Research on Divorce. Hypatia, 19(1), 1–24
Atkeson, L., & Taylor, A. (2019). Partisan Affiliation in Political Science: Insights from Florida and North Carolina. PS: Political Science & Politics, 52(4), 706–710
Bäckstrand, K. (2003). Civic Science for Sustainability: Reframing the Role of Experts, Policy-Makers and Citizens in Environmental Governance. Global Environmental Politics, 3(4), 24–41
Bedessem, B., & Ruphy, S. (2020). Citizen Science and Scientific Objectivity: Mapping Out Epistemic Risks and Benefits. Perspectives on Science, 28(5), 630–654
The Biology and Gender Study Group. (1988). The Importance of Feminist Critique for Contemporary Cell Biology. Hypatia, 3(1), 61–76
Blackburn, S. (1998). Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Oxford University Press
Bonney, R., Ballard, H. L., Jordan, R., McCallie, E., Phillips, T., Shirk, J., & Wilderman, C. C. (2009). Public Participation in Scientific Research: Defining the Field and Assessing Its Potential for Informal Science Education. A CAISE Inquiry Group Report. Washington, D.C: Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE)
Braun, K., & Schultz, S. (2010). “… a certain amount of engineering involved”: Constructing the public in participatory governance arrangements. Public Understanding of Science, 19(4), 403–419
Brown, P. (1992). Popular Epidemiology and Toxic Waste Contamination: Lay and Professional Ways of Knowing. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 33(3), 267–281
Brown, M. (2009). Science in Democracy: Expertise, Institutions, and Representation. MIT Press
Busenberg, G. (1999). Collaborative and adversarial analysis in environmental policy. Policy Sciences, 32, 1–11
Cavalier, D., & Kennedy, E. (Eds.). (2016). The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science. Policy and Outcomes: Consortium for Science
Christiano, T. (2008). The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits. Oxford University Press
Corburn, J. (2002). Combining Community-Based Research and Local Knowledge to Confront Asthma and Subsistence-Fishing Hazards in Greenpoint/Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. Environmental Health Perspectives, 110(suppl), 241–248
Crasnow, S. (2008). Feminist philosophy of science: ‘standpoint’ and knowledge. Science and Education, 17(10), 1089–1110
Crasnow, S., & Intemann, K. (2020). Introduction. The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Philosophy of Science. Routledge
Donlon, D. (1993). Imbalance in the Sex Ratio in Collections of Australian Aboriginal Skeletal Remains. In du Cros and Smith (Eds.) Women in Archaeology: a feminist critique (pp. 98–103). Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University
Douglas, H. (2009). Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal. University of Pittsburgh Press
Douglas, H. (2013). The Value of Cognitive Values. Philosophy of Science, 80, 796–806
Ecklund, E. H. (2010). Science vs. Religion: What Do Scientists Really Believe?. Oxford University Press
Eigi, J. (2017). Different motivations, similar proposals: objectivity in scientific community and democratic science policy. Synthese, 194, 4657–4669
Eitzel, M., et al. (2017). Citizen Science Terminology Matters: Exploring Key Terms. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2(1), 1–20. [23 authors]
Elliott, K. (2017). A Tapestry of Values: An Introduction to Values in Science. Oxford University Press
Elliott, K., & Richards, T. (Eds.). (2017). Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science. Oxford University Press
Evans, R., & Plows, A. (2007). Listening without Prejudice? Re-Discovering the Value of the Disinterested Citizen. Social Studies of Science, 37(6), 827–853
Fehr, C. (2011). What Is in It for Me? The Benefits of Diversity in Scientific Communities. In H. Grasswick (Ed.), Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (pp. 133–155). Springer
Fiske, A., Prainsack, B., & Buyx, A. (2019). Meeting the needs of underserved populations: setting the agenda for more inclusive citizen science of medicine. Journal of Medical Ethics, 45, 617–622
Graham, L., Treves-Kagan, S., Magee, E., DeLong, S., Ashley, O., Macy, R. … Bowling, J. (2017). Sexual Assault Policies and Consent Definitions: A Nationally Representative Investigation of U.S. Colleges and Universities. Journal of School Violence, 16(3), 243–258
Guerrero, A. (2014). Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 42(2), 135–178
Gutmann, A., & Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement. Harvard University Press
Harding, S. (1998). Women, Science, and Society. Science, 281(5383), 1599–1600
Intemann, K. (2010). 25 Years of Feminist Empiricism and Standpoint Theory: Where Are We Now? Hypatia, 25(4), 778–796
Irwin, A. (2018). Citizen Science Comes of Age. Nature, 562, 480–482
Kitcher, P. (2011). Science in a Democratic Society. Prometheus Books
Kourany, J. (2010). Philosophy of Science after Feminism. Oxford University Press
Kuhn, T. (1977). Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in the Scientific Tradition and Change (pp. 320–339). University of Chicago Press
Landemore, H. (2020). Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Princeton University Press
Longino, H. (1990). Science as Social Knowledge. Princeton University Press
Longino, H. (1994). Search of Feminist Epistemology. Monist, 77, 472–485
Longino, H. (1995). Gender, Politics, and the Theoretical Virtues. Synthese, 104, 383–397
Lusk, G. (2021). Does democracy require value-neutral science? Analyzing the legitimacy of scientific information in the political sphere. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 90, 102–110
Mahr, D., & Dickel, S. (2019). Citizen science beyond invited participation: nineteenth century amateur naturalists, epistemic autonomy, and big data approaches avant la lettre. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 41, 41
Martin, E. (1991). The Egg and the Sperm; How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles. Signs, 16(3), 485–501
McGrath, S. (2011). Moral Knowledge and Experience. In Shafer-Landau (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol. 6 (pp. 107–127). Oxford University Press
National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine (NAS-NAE-IOM). (2007). Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/11741
National Science Foundation (NSF). (1982). Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering (pp. 3–45). The National Academies Press
Nussbaum, M. (2011). Perfectionist Liberalism and Political Liberalism. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 39(1), 3–45
Okruhlik, K. (1994). Gender and the Biological Sciences. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 20, 21–42
Ottinger, G. (2016). Social Movement-Based Citizen Science. In Cavalier and Kennedy (eds.) The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science (pp. 89–104). Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes
Oreskes, N. (2019). Why Trust Science?. Princeton University Press
Pew Research Center (2009). Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2009/07/09/public-praises-science-scientists-fault-public-media/
Pew Research Center (2015). A Deep Dive Into Party Affiliation. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/
Phillips, K. W. (2014). How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. Scientific American, 1 October 2014
Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberalism (extended edition). Columbia University Press
Richardson, S. (2010). Feminist philosophy of science: history, contributions, and challenges. Synthese, 177, 337–362
Rolin, K. (2017). Can social diversity best be incorporated into science by adopting the social value management ideal? In Elliott and Steel (eds.), Current Controversies in Values in Science (pp. 113–129). Routledge
The Royal Society (2019). Diversity Strategy 2019–2022. Available at https://royalsociety.org/media/policy/topics/diversity-in-science/2019-09-Diversity-strategy-2019-22.pdf
Salkin, W. (2021). Democracy within, justice without: The duties of informal political representatives. Noûs. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12391
Sarewitz, D. (2010). Lab Politics: Most scientists in this country are Democrats. That’s a problem. Slate, 8 December 2010. https://slate.com/technology/2010/12/most-scientists-in-this-country-are-democrats-that-s-a-problem.html
Scheper-Hughes, N. (1993). Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. University of California Press
Schroeder, S. A. (2021). Democratic Values: A Better Foundation for Public Trust in Science. British Journal for Philosophy of Science, 72(2), 545–562
Schroeder, S. A. (forthcoming). Assessing Values in Science: Ethical vs. Political Approaches. Canadian Journal of Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.1017/can.2020.41
Schroeder, S. A. (forthcoming-b). The Limits of Democratizing Science: When Scientists Should Ignore the Public. Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2022.54
Solomon, S. (2009). Stakeholders or experts? On the ambiguous implications of public participation in science. In Van Bouwel (Ed.), The Social Sciences and Democracy (pp. 39–61). Palgrave
Strasser, B., Baudry, J., Mahr, D., Sanchez, G., & Tancoigne, E. (2019). “Citizen Science”? Rethinking Science and Public Participation. Science & Technology Studies, 32(2), 52–76
Stewart, A., Copeland, A., Chester, N., Malley, J., & Barenbaum, N. (1997). Separating Together: How Divorce Transforms Families. The Guilford Press
Swartz, T. H., Palermo, A. S., Masur, S. K., & Aberg, J. A. (2019). The Science and Value of Diversity: Closing the Gaps in Our Understanding of Inclusion and Diversity. The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 220, S33–S41
Tomblin, D., Pirtle, Z., Farooque, M., Sittenfeld, D., Mahoney, E., Worthington, R. … Guston, D. (2017). Integrating Public Deliberation into Engineering Systems: Participatory Technology Assessment of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission. Astropolitics, 15(2), 141–166
Von Oertzen, C. (2013). Science in the Cradle; Milicent Shinn and Her Home-Based Network of Baby Observers, 1890–1910. Centaurus, 55, 175–195
Whyte, K. P., Brewer, J. P., & Johnson, J. T. (2016). Weaving Indigenous science, protocols and sustainability science. Sustainability Science, 11, 25–32
Wiggins, A., & Wilbanks, J. (2019). The Rise of Citizen Science in Health and Biomedical Research. The American Journal of Bioethics, 19(8), 3–14
Wylie, A. (2012). Feminist Philosophy of Science: Standpoint Matters. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, 86(2), 47–76
Wylie, A. (2015). A Plurality of Pluralisms: Collaborative Practice in Archaeology. In R. Padovani, and Tsou (Eds.) (Ed.), Objectivity in Science: New Perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (pp. 189–210). Springer
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schroeder, S.A. Diversifying science: comparing the benefits of citizen science with the benefits of bringing more women into science. Synthese 200, 306 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03774-z
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03774-z