Science and Justice

Science is a source of power because of its knowledge generating capacities. Scientists are responsible for the foreseeable impacts of their work because of the general moral responsibilities (Douglas 2003) and because of articulated professional responsibilities (AAAS 2017). Because of the potency of science, scientists should think about the impact of their work on social justice, both in the conducting of research and in the utilization of their findings. But this requires forethought about what the impacts of scientific research is likely to be, and such forethought can be difficult to do. While we should not and cannot expect perfect forethought, it is not clear how much effort at forethought we should demand of scientists to meet their moral responsibilities to consider social justice concerns. In this paper, I will explore this terrain from both the perspective of individual scientists and the institutional settings in which they work. I will argue that scientists must do some forethought themselves, including thinking about the complex and pluralist societies in which their work is both conducted and utilized. But very often, scientists do not have the expertise to do such forethought well. In these cases, scientists need to recruit interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary help. This is where the institutions in which scientists work could be of great assistance, to have clear locations and resources for scientists who want to develop collaborations to address these concerns better. Drawing on interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary expertise should not be required of scientists (it is not a matter of accountability) but it should be expected that responsible scientists do so when they deem it necessary.
Further, institutional settings for scientists need to attend to the ways in which some policies incentivize work that bends towards, or away from, social justice. For example, institutions that favor private collaborators that lock up the results of science with patents tend to increase inequalities, and thus exacerbate injustices. Institutions that support scientists that work with marginalized communities support scientific work that bends towards justice.
I will also argue, following Sen 2006, that we do not need a settled theory of justice to make progress on these matters. It suffices that we attend to the gross social inequities that are clearly unjust. I will provide examples of scientific work that would clearly worsen social injustices and work that clearly will ameliorate social injustices in order to show that forethought for the impact of science on social justice is readily doable. Borderline and opaque cases are more difficult, but do not show that the responsibility does not exist. Instead, they show that scientists need to have clear places to go to ask for help (hence the need for institutional support) and that some choices are difficult.

When philosophers of science have engaged with theories of justice and political philosophers, these theories and thinkers have typically come from within the liberal intellectual tradition. This talk examines three key ideas from a "sibling rival" of the liberal tradition, namely, critical theory; and argues that these ideas have been and can further be fruitfully used within philosophy of science.

By "critical theory" I refer to a broad leftist tradition that emerged in the nineteenth century, as liberal ideals of freedom and formal equality were gradually found to be inadequate for the political projects of working class (Marx, Luxemburg, and Bakunin), feminist (Emma Goldman), and antiracist (Du Bois) movements. The scope of critical theory has expanded dramatically since the early 1970s, with critical approaches to gender and sex, disability, environmentalism, and imperialism/colonialism. In recent decades, major political philosophers in the critical theory tradition have included Angela Davis, Nancy Fraser, Charles Mills, and Iris Young.

This talk will focus on three key ideas from the critical theory tradition. First, non-ideal theory. Critical theorists are primarily interested in understanding the major injustices of our non-ideal, actually existing society, in order to identify specific injustices, understand how they are produced and maintained, and hopefully produce incremental improvements; rather than to develop a set of timeless or universal principles that would characterize a perfectly just society. I argue that, in terms of both aims and methods, this non-ideal approach strongly resembles integrated HPS and the philosophy of scientific practice.

Second, power. Liberal theories of justice, such as Rawls' justice as fairness, often focus primarily on distributive justice. Critical theorists, by contrast, often focus on power, especially as a social system or social structure. From this point of view, while unjust (undemocratic) power structures can have unjust distributive effects, in the first instance the problem with undemocratic power structures is that they are undemocratic. This leads immediately to accounts of procedural injustice and concerns about inclusion, exclusion, and political representation. While much recent work in science and values has focused on distributive injustices associated with science (e.g., inductive risk), critical theory directs our attention to the procedural injustices associated with science. What role does (and should) science play in the procedures of democratic policymaking? Some philosophers of environmental science have taken up this question, but it seems that less has been done in areas such as philosophy of economics or philosophy of medicine.

Third, ideological critique. Since Marx, critical theorists have argued that the science produced by a society - not only its social science, but also its natural science - is deeply influenced by the power structures of that society. Of course, areas such as feminist philosophy of science and philosophy of race science have historical roots in this kind of ideological critique. But I am less aware of work at other potential points of contact, such as network conceptions of both social and biological systems, or the influence of neoliberal entrepreneurial culture on genomics.

The phrase "democratizing science" is used to refer to many different ways of getting the public involved in science, for many different purposes. In this paper, I will focus on one particular way in which science can be democratized: scientists can invite the public to make the value judgments that come up in the course of scientific research. Scientists could defer to the public, for example, to determine how to manage inductive risk, to select a quantitative measure of inequality, or to define a concept like employment. Many philosophers, including Heather Douglas, Kristen Intemann, and Phillip Kitcher, have argued that bringing the public into science in this way can give the resulting science a kind of legitimacy it might otherwise lack.
I begin by clarifying that any meaningful sort of deference to the public must require that scientists accept and work from the public's values in some cases where scientists disagree with those values. Further, it requires accepting the public's values in at least some cases where scientists believe the public is making a serious error. But I argue that deference need not require that scientists defer to the public no matter what the public concludes. Science can still achieve legitimacy through democratization even if in some cases scientists reject the public's values.
What, then, determines when scientists can or should reject the public's values? One natural thought is that scientists should reject the public's values when the public has made an especially serious error. If, for example, there are objective truths about value, it might seem appropriate for scientists to reject the public's values if they stray too far from that objective standard. I argue, however, that this view is not especially plausible. A more plausible alternative, though, emerges from recent work in egalitarian and democratic theory.
According to democratic theorists such as Thomas Christiano, Elizabeth Anderson, and Niko Kolodny, democracy is justified because it enables relational equality, a kind of equal standing among citizens. This means that values which directly contradict or indirectly undermine relational equality have a special significance in a democracy: because they conflict with the ultimate source of democratic authority, they cannot count as legitimate exercises of that authority. They are, democratically, self-undermining. Returning to science, this means that scientists seeking to democratize science in the name of legitimacy can (and indeed must) reject public values that undermine relational equality. 
Which values, then, undermine relational equality? A comprehensive answer to this question would require a more carefully worked out theory of egalitarian democracy than we currently have. But, drawing on the work of Janet Kourany, I conclude the essay by showing examples of public values that clearly do undermine relational equality and therefore ought to be rejected by scientists. And then, drawing on Elizabeth Anderson, I identify examples of public values that, despite being substantively mistaken, do not undermine relational equality and therefore ought not be rejected by scientists.

Epistemic injustices such as 'testimonial quieting' and 'testimonial smothering' have attracted a good deal of attention in epistemology. Exploring the nature and variety of epistemic injustices in science is a fast-growing area of interest in philosophy of science. In this paper I contribute to this field by identifying two inter-related varieties of epistemic injustice ubiquitous in science. Epistemic severing is the act of wilfully cutting off some epistemic communities from the narrative of scientific knowledge production. Epistemic trademarking is the ensuing process of trademarking relevant portions of scientific knowledge as the exclusive product of one epistemic community over others. I elucidate the nature of these two notions with examples from the history of physics and contemporary biopiracy.