CARTA
Values matter in science, so do facts:
Response to Gingras
École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l’information, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec (Canada)
Kyle Siler
un acceso abierto
diario
Palabras clave: gatekeeping, peer review
Citación: Siler, k. (2022). Values matter
in science, so do facts: Response to
Gingras. Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas,
3(2), 485–487. https://doi.org/10.1162
/qss_c_00197
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_c_00197
Recibió: 4 Puede 2022
Aceptado: 8 Junio 2022
Autor correspondiente:
Kyle Siler
ksiler@gmail.com
Editor de manejo:
Staša Milojević
Derechos de autor: © 2022 Kyle Siler. Publicado
bajo una atribución Creative Commons
4.0 Internacional (CC POR 4.0) licencia.
La prensa del MIT
Following my letter to QSS (Siler, 2021), Yves Gingras (2022) responded with a variety of bad
faith arguments, ad hominem attacks, and hyperbole. Gingras repeatedly distorted what I actu-
ally wrote, then attacked the distortion. Straw men might be convenient interlocutors, and can
provide ballast for hot takes, but seldom yield intellectual progress. In his letter, Gingras
broadly posited a false dichotomy, with “rational,” apolitical stalwarts (including himself ) pro-
tecting the integrity of modern science against an incursion of hysterical, moralizing social
justice warriors hostile to unpopular truths. Not only does this perspective betray a facile
understanding of modern scientific communication, it also entails the fallacious notion that
scientific empirics and underlying values are mutually exclusive.
Gingras made a baseless accusation that my letter exhibited “ignorance of the nature of
publicación,” since I criticized reviewers of Strumia (2021) for refusing to anonymously share
their peer review reports. Sin embargo, Gingras omitted the important detail from Waltman’s
(2021: fn1) editorial that reviewers of Strumia (2021) were asked to anonymously publish
the reports. While the reviewers were within their rights to refuse, I stand by my opinion that
this was a cowardly and unproductive response, especially since open science is a founda-
tional value of QSS, and an open peer review program has since been implemented at the
journal. Increíblemente, Gingras doubled down with farfetched, scattershot accusations of “char-
acter assassination.” Despite Gingras’ hyperbolic accusations, nobody’s character was put in
peril by my letter.
Próximo, Gingras added a 900-word tangent on the self-retraction of a 2020 Nature Commu-
nications article on gender and mentorship, which is largely irrelevant to my letter. Notablemente, I
took no normative position on that article or retraction, beyond suggesting that open peer
review can be beneficial with controversial articles. Sin embargo, I will suggest to Gingras that
when authors self-retract an article—forestalling further empirical scrutiny—public proclama-
tions that empirics are nevertheless correct should be taken with a grain of salt.
Gingras used further misinterpretations of my letter to fuel attacks that I made “bizarre”
comparisons between Strumia (2021) and other controversial social science articles. I invoked
analogous cases of controversial articles to provide historical evidence that editorial philoso-
phies that promote “diverse” and “controversial” viewpoints for their own sake can entail dan-
gerous slippery slopes. The bothsidesism espoused in Waltman’s editorial can potentially be
used as justification to publish anything. Gingras went as far to argue that we should congrat-
ulate QSS for providing a platform to debate Strumia (2021). By this logic, should we congrat-
ulate the former Lancet editors for creating space to “rationally debate” links between vaccines
and autism, after they published the infamous Wakefield article in 1998? If someone is willing
and able to meaningfully defend Strumia (2021) from the widespread theoretical and empirical
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Values matter in science, so do facts
criticisms it received, that can convince reasonable people. Sin embargo, at the very least, uno
needs to do better than merely assert “we need diverse and controversial perspectives” or
simply dismiss critics as sanctimonious, politically correct ideologues with ulterior motives.
Gingras also argued that contemporary academia exhibits confirmation biases towards
politically fashionable research. I agree that this sometimes occurs; in some academic fields
and communities more than others. In my letter, I explicitly stated my opinion that political
biases in the social sciences—which tend to skew socially liberal—can be intellectual and
sociopolitical liabilities. Sin embargo, betraying a lack of reflexivity, Gingras lobbed accusations
of “bullying” and “confirmation bias” without meaningful evidence. Más, Gingras appears
to be unconcerned with—or oblivious to—the obvious parallel possibility that someone who
publicly expressed opinions including, “physics was invented and built by men” (Strumia,
n.d.), and that modern notions of gender equality are “blind to human biology practiced as
in the plains of Africa thousands of years ago” (Strumia, n.d.) might himself be prone to
confirmation bias, particularly regarding gender issues.
As a professional institution, QSS—or any legitimate academic journal—requires quality
control of both theory and empirics. I certainly did not argue that there should be political
litmus tests for academic evaluations or editorial decisions. There are many competent pub-
lished articles that challenge or contradict orthodoxies on gender and inequality in science
and elsewhere, from a variety of theoretical and political perspectives. Strumia (2021) incluso
cited some of them. Most or all of those articles were published without creating widespread
backlash or getting debunked by members of the relevant journal’s editorial board. Subse-
quent to publication, empirical criticisms of Strumia (2021) have been extensive and thorough,
while defenses have been paltry. Quality control and social values are important to any pro-
fessional institution (Abbott, 1988). In academia, these values include academic standards
(teórico, metodológico, empirical), as well as professional and social responsibilities.
After QSS published an incendiary and heavily criticized article, and the strongest defense
of the article made by the editor-in-chief (and MIT Press) was an appeal to the virtues of con-
troversy and “ideological diversity,” it is reasonable to question what the values and standards
of QSS currently are, and what they should be. Asking such questions is professionally and
scientifically vital, as opposed to indicative of social conformity, political correctness, or other
bogeymen Gingras perceives.1
Professional and intellectual values might often be nebulous and contested, but they are a
core part of any academic or scientific pursuit and thus should be monitored and discussed.
While there will inevitably be disagreements on values and other normative matters in sci-
ence, engaging in good faith and sincerely listening to others is a necessary start for productive
dialogue. I hope others in the QSS community—and beyond—are willing to engage in such
discusiones.
1 An especially addled sentence from Gingras: “I will not comment on the fact that the very speed at which the
petition was signed probably means that most of the signatories never analyzed the data and were simply
reacting emotionally.”
1. Gingras says he is not going to comment but continues with a rambling sentence afterwards. dentro del
same sentence, he both says he will not comment and also does comment.
2. Gingras boldly asserts a “fact,” but there are no facts in the sentence. This is just Gingras’ personal
opinion about what he thinks what the diffusion of a particular petition “probably means.”
Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas
486
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Values matter in science, so do facts
CONFLICTO DE INTERESES
No competing interests.
INFORMACIÓN DE FINANCIACIÓN
Funding was received from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (grant G-2020-12678).
REFERENCIAS
Abbott, A. (1988). The system of professions: An essay on the divi-
sion of expert labor. chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://
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Gingras, Y. (2022). Towards a moralization of bibliometrics? A
response to Kyle Siler. Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas, 3(1),
315–318. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_c_00178
Siler, k. (2021). L’Affaire Strumia reveals troubling gatekeeping values
and outcomes at Quantitative Science Studies. Quantitative Science
Estudios, 2(3), 1119–1122. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_c_00153
Strumia, A. (2021). Gender issues in fundamental physics: A biblio-
metric analysis. Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas, 2(1), 225–253.
https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00114
Strumia, A. (n.d.). No title. https://alessandrostrumiahome.files
.wordpress.com/2019/03/strumiagenderslidescern.pdf
waltman, l. (2021). Understanding gender differences in science
requires a diversity of perspectives, including controversial ones.
Estudios de ciencias cuantitativas, 2(1), 224. https://doi.org/10.1162
/qss_e_00115
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