Like many others, I went to see Will, the latest film by Denys Arcand. Without wanting to reveal the plot or its outcome, let’s just say that, in the seniors’ residence where the hero of the film lives, there is a mural dating from the 19the century. It depicts Indigenous people welcoming Jacques Cartier and his crew. But now activists consider it offensive and protest.
This is obviously a reference to all these attempts at banishment and censorship which have been rampant for several years. As is typically always the case, the subject of the dispute here is an issue at the border of politics, history and identity.
But surely such things could not happen in the natural sciences? Think again.
Where we didn’t expect it…
I have already told you about what happens to ScientificAmerican and which worries many people. But this is popular science.
There is worse. THE Guide to inclusive writing of the American Chemical Society advises against using terms like “double-blind studies,” “healthy weight,” “black market,” among others, which are deemed offensive.
The University of Southern California School of Social Work tells us that the word “ field » (field, as in field of study) is racist and should not be used. This is because the slaves worked… in the fields.
In the editorial of the magazine Natural Human Behaviorwe could recently read (2022) that researchers must “as much as possible minimize the risks of harm in the public sphere for the groups studied” because, even without meaning to, we can “stigmatize individuals or human groups” and thus be “discriminatory, racist, sexist, homophobic”.
To those who are concerned about what may then happen to academic freedom, the journal responds that, of course, “academic freedom is fundamental”, but that it is not unlimited. “In some cases, the potential harm to the populations studied may outweigh the benefits of publication. »
Very smart who can measure all this and predict the long-term effects of scientific results; and very pretentious who then claims to know what to prohibit and allows himself to do so.
We’re not just banning words. We also censor proper names, by removing names given to prices, buildings, works.
Here are a few that people who know science will be stunned to recognize—all recent cases of censorship: William Shockley, Fritz Haber, Erwin Schrödinger, Isaac Newton, Robert Millikan, Ronald Fisher, Thomas Henry Huxley, Edward O. Wilson, James Webb.
All this is not without possible consequences on the peer review process of articles, on the decision to publish or not certain writings deemed problematic in the light of certain dominant ideas and on the retractions of published articles.
The authors of the article which identifies these disturbing facts — and several others — write: “The politicization of science threatens to undermine humanity’s ability to see the world as it is and therefore to solve the most serious problems. difficult. It undermines our ability to address technological and environmental problems, such as pandemics, climate change and energy, as well as social challenges, such as racism, poverty and inequality. »
An example of the concrete consequences of these excesses has just been given by Jonathan Jarry, of McGill University. In a text that is worrying to say the least, it shows that the World Health Organization (WHO, a specialized UN agency created in 1948) now makes room for what it calls “traditional and complementary medical practices” .
In doing so, it ultimately promotes homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, traditional Indian medicine (called Ayurvedic medicine), naturopathy and various remedies that are dubious to say the least. The WHO certainly recognizes that these therapeutic practices must be supported by evidence. But which ones? We are told that while there is much to be learned from controlled clinical trials, other methods of evaluation are also valid, including patterns of use. Jarry writes: “This is a worrying way of promoting popularity as an indication of validity. »
These distressing examples give weight to the ambition to publish in science in French, but hoping that we will not reproduce these sad errors in our language.
In the face of all these sad facts, would something positive do some good? I think I found it.
A proposition to discover
I recently had the pleasure of hearing a conference given by Stéphane Vigneault, of the École ensemble movement, the movement that Mr. Lisée spoke about in a recent column.
Faced with the undeniable fact that our education system is the most unequal in the country, École ensemble puts forward ideas that Mr. Lisée summed up very well.
But this citizen movement proposes, among other solutions, to redraw the school map: students would thus be associated with local schools through redesigned and optimized school catchments, school catchments similar to each other socio-economically and minimizing the distance between the school and home.
Go listen to this conference: it’s an original idea and one that deserves to be known and debated.
Doctor of philosophy, doctor of education and columnist, Normand Baillargeon has written, directed or translated and edited more than seventy works.