What Is Socially Responsible Science?

Philosophers of science, particularly those working on science and values, often talk about the need for science to be socially responsible (Kourany 2010; Brown 2013; Douglas 2014; Resnik and Elliott 2016; Bird 2014; de Melo-Martin and Intemann 2011). However, what this means is not always clear. Many institutions take science to be responsible if scientists act in epistemically responsible ways and follow basic norms of RCR, e.g., human subject protections. For others, whether science is socially responsible depends on whether it benefits the common good (Kourany, 2010). Pluralists have tended to argue that science is socially responsible when it is pursued in a variety of directions that aims to meet the diverse interests and needs that comprise society (Longino 2002). For standpoint feminists, science is socially responsible if it aims at achieving social justice (Harding 2008). As this brief overview shows, what constitutes socially responsible science is not univocal. 
In this paper, we map various ways of conceptualizing socially responsible science and discuss the normative implications these different understandings have for pursuing it. In particular, we distinguish among several aspects that are relevant to judgments about whether science is socially responsible. They include the aims of science, the questions asked, the resulting products, the norms governing scientific practice, and the beneficiaries of scientific research. Attending to these different aspects can lead to various understandings of socially responsible science. For example, science can be judged socially responsible if it aims to produce unbiased knowledge or if it attempts to produce knowledge particularly beneficial to certain groups. Similarly, scientific research can be considered socially responsible if its norms promote a diverse set of values or interests, or if they further certain values or interests such as human flourishing. Or science could be deemed socially responsible if it benefits the common good or insofar as it advances pressing social needs. Likewise, socially responsible science could be that which has certain aims, results in particular products, is governed by particular norms, and benefits certain stakeholders. 
Endorsing specific aspects as the proper object of social responsibility leads to different normative implications about what must be done to achieve socially responsible science. For instance, contending that science is socially responsible when it aims to produce reliable knowledge, calls for scientific communities structured in ways more likely to produce unbiased information such as those including mechanisms to minimize questionable research practices, limit conflicts of interest, or increase effective mechanisms for critical evaluation. If on the other hand, one conceptualizes socially responsible science as science that aims at producing knowledge of benefit to certain groups, this may require strategies for incorporating stakeholder participation in research agenda setting. Similarly, seeing science as socially responsible when it benefits the public good may require a pluralistic research agenda that produces knowledge relevant to diverse interests and values. Given the different normative recommendations that might follow from focusing on various aspects, it behooves philosophers of science to be conceptually clearer about what they mean when they advocate for socially responsible science.

How are scientists accountable for the claims that they produce and publish? To answer this question, we need to first distinguish accountability from other senses of responsibility. There are several senses of responsibility which may be relevant when we evaluate scientific outputs and the behaviors of scientists themselves. One basic sense of responsibility is simply causal. The second sense of responsibility is answerability. A scientist may be responsible for being able to answer queries about scientific results or the contents of a published paper or conclusions of policy recommendations. Finally, there is accountability, which concerns wider community norms and our practices of blame and praise. A scientist can be held accountable for a scientific claim if it is appropriate to blame or praise the scientist for asserting that claim in accordance to epistemic norms or moral norms. In this talk, I will discuss whether the epistemic and moral norms for assessing accountability are group or individual norms. I argue that we need to hold both individuals and groups in science accountable in order to incentivize socially responsible science.
In modern science, one major challenge to accountable science is the prevalence of collaboration. As cognitive labor is distributed throughout a group or community, scientific misconduct is more difficult to prosecute when it is unclear whether it is the individual or the group who is accountable. Relatedly, it is unclear whether the norms governing accountable science are individual or group norms. While the results of science can only be achieved through a collective effort, I argue that individuals nonetheless need to be the target of our judgments of accountability. Science is both an individual and a collective endeavor. We need to think of our epistemic and moral norms in terms of both. My view is not that we ought to choose individual norms over group norms or vice versa, but rather I believe in order to incentivize better science, we need to understand how group norms and individual norms may interact.
There exist interesting results within social epistemology that methodological prescriptions for scientific communities and those for individual scientists are logically independent. That is, epistemically rational individuals might form epistemically irrational groups and that, conversely, rational groups might be composed of irrational individuals ("The Independence Thesis"). So, to incentivize positive group epistemic results, we may need to incentivize individuals to act irrationally epistemically. I argue that while this may be true for epistemic norms, this should not be true for moral norms. Moral norms should be consistent across individuals and communities. That is, for a group to act morally, its individual members must also act morally. This is because immoral individual actions can result in real harm which cannot be compensated for at the group level. A group with members that act immorally is also a group that has failed to act morally. We should then incentivize individuals as well as incentivize individuals in groups to police each other so to ensure that the group as a whole is held to collective moral norms.

This paper asks: how can human subjects researchers conduct socially responsible science which better represents racial and ethnic diversity amongst human research participants in science without further reifying racial categories?  "Reification" here refers to a concept having an over-exalted place in the public mindset-an impression of independence, and existing above rather than being a result of human affairs.  So, this paper is about how to represent (scientifically and responsibly) the real, lived, and often racially diverse experiences of persons-along with the very real effects that both beliefs in race and actual racism have had on their bodies and their lives-without entrenching any further the pernicious, mistaken belief that racial judgements and categories are biologically determined and scientifically validated.
Echoing calls to increase the representation of women and the elderly in clinical trials (e.g., Gurwitz, Col, & Avorn 1992; Bennett 1993; Mertkaz et alia 1993; Simon 2005; Vitale et alia 2017; Heyrana, Byers, & Stratton 2018; Pilote & Raparelli 2018-though see also Meinert 1995; Holden 2008), calls to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of human subjects research have also and understandably been made (e.g., Svensson 1989; McCarthy 1994; Robertson 1994; Swanson & Ward 1995; Murthy, Krumholz, & Gross 2004; Schmotzer 2012; Duma et alia 2018; Nazha, Mishra, Pentz, & Owonikoko 2019; Regnante et alia 2019).  On the face of it, these and other popular Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives can seem both morally essential and obviously worth pursuing.  But things are not always as they seem.
Some race scholars have argued that using racial categories in a way which fails to acknowledge that building those boxes and putting people in them is to do something that does not have to be done is to contribute, and reprehensibly so, to racial realism (e.g., Fields & Fields 2014; Hochman 2021).  So, this paper takes very seriously positions such as "Substituted for racism, race transforms the act of a subject into an attribute of the object" (Fields 2014, 48) and "there are no races, only racialized groups" (Hochman 2017, 61).  There are also increasing calls to end what is variably-often by scientific field-called colonial, fly-in fly-out, helicopter, parachute, or parasitic research (e.g., Yozwiak et alia 2016; Bockarie 2018; The Lancet Global Health 2018; Rochmyaningsih 2018; Minasny et alia 2020).  The aim of this paper is to seriously consider how to balance the oft well-intentioned aim of increasing racial and ethnic representation in human subjects research with the empirically well-founded concern that this may just be another means of racial and ethnic exploitation which entrenches the political, public, and social pervasiveness of presumptive racial realism.  The paper asks: how to enhance racial and ethnic representation in research without also enhancing racial exploitation and reification?