Anti-Mertonian norms undermine the scientific ethos: A critique of Bird, Jackson Jr., and Winston's policy proposals and associated justification

Abstract

We make the case that Bird, Jackson Jr., and Winston's (BJ&W; 2024) policy proposals boil down to a rejection of Merton's (1942) traditional scientific norms of communality, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism, and a demand for anti-Mertonian norms to be imposed, top down, upon psychological science. Their anti-Mertonian norms (specifically secrecy, particularism, interestedness, and organized dogmatism) are at odds with the scientific ethos. We highlight problems with their argument that Racial Hereditarian Research (RHR) is uniquely "socially pernicious". We then discuss adverse effects that their imposition of anti-Mertonian norms would likely cause in relation to: 1) instances of research on racial and ethnic differences that have produced findings agreeable to egalitarianism, and which would be proscribed under their framework; 2) the fomenting of genuinely scientifically racist beliefs that are empirically at odds with RHR; and 3) the chilling effect on other areas of science whose findings have also been misused, including “mainstream human genetics”. Ultimately, we observe that BJ&W's anti-Mertonian policy prescriptions are unworkable in practice, and would be highly damaging to psychological science if widely enforced.