Research as resistance: Naming and dismantling the master narrative of "good" science.

Abstract

The call for psychological science to make amends for "causing harm to communities of color and contributing to systemic inequities" (American Psychological Association, 2022a) requires a critical acknowledgment that science itself is not neutral but a sociopolitical and ideological endeavor. From its inception, psychology used science to produce what was framed as incontrovertible "hard" evidence of racial hierarchy, infallible "proof" that white people (i.e., cismale, heteronormative, and economically resourced white people) were superior to Indigenous and Black people. We first trace the historical links between postpositivist epistemology and the ideology of white supremacy in psychological science, showing that although explicitly racist science (e.g., eugenics) has faded, the widely shared and strictly enforced epistemological norms about what is (and is not) "good" science remain entrenched. We then outline three epistemic imperatives to resist this harmful master narrative: (a) embrace humanizing epistemologies, (b) listen and learn from those who have been systematically left out of science, and (c) recognize resistance as normative and necessary. We discuss how these imperatives, rooted in critical, feminist, and antiracist scholarship, disrupt oppression and guide us toward doing science that does good. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).